Full text of "A primary charge delivered to the clergy of the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glandelagh, and Kildare : and, with some omissions, to the clergy of the provinces of Dublin and Cashel, at the triennial visitation, September and October, 1865"

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A PRIMARY CHARGE.

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TO THE CLERGY OF THE
UNITED DIOCESES

DUBLIN AND GLANDELAGH, AND KILDABE;

AND, WITH SOME OMISSIONS,

TO THE CLERGY

THE PROVINCES OF DUBLIN AND CASHEL,

AT THE

TRIENNIAL VISITATION, SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER, 1865.

RICHARD CHENEVIX,

ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, BISHOP OF GLANDELAGH AND KILDARE,
PRIMATE OF IRELAND, AND METROPOLITAN.

gubfm :

HODGES, SMITH AND CO.,

PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

3Toubon mrb Cambribgje :
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1865.

s -fas

CHARGE,

ETC.

My Reverend 'Brethren,

I MIGHT say much, without saying too much,
without transgressing the limits of the
strictest truth, of the deep sense which I entertain of
my own insufficiency for such a task as has devolved
on me to-day, and of the sense deeper still which
I feel of my insufficiency for the office which has
entailed that task upon me. If I know anything of
my own heart, it is not willingly that I stand in the
relation in which I do stand at this time to not a
few older, to very many wiser, better, more full of
labours, more approved in the Church of God, than
myself.

And yet I feel that it will be more consistent with
Christian simplicity, — which avoids, so far as possible,
speaking of self at all, even though in the language
of disparagement and depreciation, which is conscious
that a subtle pride may often lurk under language
of this kind, — if, with only one briefest acknowledg-
ment of this insufficiency of mine, and one earnest

request that you will now and always assist me with
your prayers, I ask you to believe that upon this
day I would much rather occupy the room of one
instructed than of an instructor, would infinitely
prefer to be reminded of my own duty, than to say a
word in the way of admonishment to others of theirs.

All matters directly personal I would willingly
have thus dismissed ; and yet there are two or three
words — they are words of thankfulness to God, of
gratitude to men — which, on the occasion of this my
primary Charge, I cannot forbear to utter. Though
not myself a stranger to Ireland, though belonging
to it by birth as by descent, myself a native of this
City, and long since knit to Ireland, not by interest
only, but by the dearest ties of my life, yet the larger
part of that life having been spent in England, I could
not but feel what various difficulties might beset my
path, suddenly transferred to a sphere new to me in
great part, how much forbearance I should need from
those whose hearty co-operation and confidence were
absolutely necessary, if the solemn task so unexpect-
edly confided to me were at all to prosper in my
hands. It was not long, however, before I learned
that, whatever difficulties might be in store for me, I
should be spared that hardest and pain fullest of all,
namely, how to assuage suspicion, to overcome pre-
judice, to reconcile j'ealousies, to disarm opposition.
Of none of these did I find the slightest trace. So
far from this, my difficulties seemed to spring from

exactly the opposite quarter — not from any unfavour-
able prejudgments, only to be removed after long
years, if removed at all, but from judgments so
favourable that it became most hard not wholly to
disappoint them, not to fall utterly beneath the kind
expectations of those who so welcomed me among
them. I have only referred to this, because I should
be wanting in gratitude to you, my reverend brethren,
who have made so pleasant, even with all its cares
and anxieties, that which might have been so pain-
ful ; — above all, because I should be wanting in thank-
fulness to Him who turns and disposes all hearts
according to the good pleasure of His will ; — if I did
not thus openly recognize the manner of reception
which I have met, first and chiefly from you, but at
the same time not from you only, from all my
fellow-countrymen in Ireland.

There was, indeed, one difficulty before me, which
all your kindness and confidence could do nothing to
diminish or remove. It was impossible for me to
forget that I was here succeeding one, whose place it
was easier for another to succeed to than to fill.
Those eminent mental powers, that common sense,
in him rising to genius, with those other intellectual
gifts which will probably obtain for Archbishop
Whately a permanent place and name in the litera-
ture of England, it could not be expected that
another should inherit. But the singleness of eye,
the disinterested nobleness with which he admin-

b 2

istered the affairs of this diocese ; the manner in
which he thoroughly identified himself with the
Church of his adoption ; the lively affection with
which he regarded the great institutions among us,
whether for the setting forward of Christ’s kingdom
or for the relief of human suffering and woe ; the
large and oftentimes magnificent hand which he ex-
tended to their support,— these were before my eyes
as graces which, however hard to attain, it would ill
become a successor to fall short in altogether. To
follow after such, to be in these things an imitator
of him, might well be a worthy ambition to any who
should come after him. To me, at the very longest,
a far briefer tenure of my solemn office will be
allotted than was to him ; but when that tenure is
over, I could ask of my fellow-men no fairer lot than
to be so followed to the grave, with the same affection
and honour which accompanied him to his ; if at
any time I had been exposed to detraction or mis-
interpretation, to have out-lived these as he had done,
and to leave behind me, on the minds of survivors,
the same convictions which he has left behind, that,
with whatever mistakes, whatever short-comings of
human infirmity, I had yet sought, and so far as I
knew it, loved and served the truth.

I believe, my reverend brethren, we all of us gladly
recognize that such gatherings together as the present
are very much more than official ; that whatever
official business may be transacted at them, they are

yet intended to serve much higher objects and aims.
We, who assemble here to take or to give some account
of the past of our ministry, can hardly fail to take
counsel together, how that ministry may be more
effectually exercised in the future. Our account
of the past, as rendered to a fellow man, will be at
best superficial and perfunctory, a few figures and a
few formal returns. But if we at all understand
the significance of such a time, we shall also ask
ourselves in the sight of God, what we have been
doing in the interval which has elapsed since last
such a coming together as this found place ; what
faces familiar once we miss to-day ; who among us
have since that time finished their course, and ren-
dered their account to the Great Head of the
Church ; — out of our own little company ten have
passed from us since my brief Episcopate began, and
one of these, Alexander Pollock, a standard-bearer
among us ; — we shall ask ourselves by what paths of
sorrow or joy our God has been leading us during
these years, and training, or graciously meaning to
train, us so to higher things for our own souls and
thus for the souls of our brethren ; over what in our
work we may rejoice (this indeed even with trem-
bling); over what we must mourn and humble our-
selves in the dust ; what weaknesses, faults, flaws
in the character of our work might be remedied
and removed by more of watchfulness, zeal, love,
labour, wisdom, prayer, upon our parts ; what of

these will probably remain a part of the subject-
matter of that infinite forgiveness which, when all is
done, each one of us will need to claim through the
blood of the Lamb.

If, in attempting a rapid oversight of some
aspects of our present condition, I go over matters to
you more or less familiar, you will not fail to
remember that to others they are not so familiar,
and that a Charge is intended for a larger circle
than that of its immediate hearers, even while it
should always keep them the foremost in view. Our
many friends in England, who watch with deepest soli-
citude us in our post of honourable danger, demand
from us some such account of our work. We can only
gain, the more widely this, and indeed every thing
about us, is known. All that is against us, this is
well known already. This, often with exaggerations
inconceivable, has found utterance again and again
within the walls of Parliament, is ever being repeated
in the current literature of the day. Let that which
is for us also be told,

Such an account of our work, of that portion at
least of it which I have the means of knowing,
which it is my duty to know, can come from
none more authoritatively than from myself. I
need not remind you how nearly it concerns
Christian honour that nothing should go forth
distorted, exaggerated, or which, keeping the letter
of the truth, violates the spirit. I therefore ask of

you, if I shall have fallen into any mistakes, as,
from my comparative newness to the things about
which 1 speak, I easily may have done, you will
help me, before my words go forth to a wider public,
to correct them.

The average number of persons attending public
worship in the churches of the diocese of Dublin on
the Sunday morning amounted, by the returns of
last year, to 40,065 ; on the Sunday afternoon or even-
ing to 19,173. These numbers do not include the
congregations of the two Cathedrals, from which I
receive no official returns. In Kildare, the numbers
are respectively 3,565 and 1,127. Besides the two
Cathedrals, there are four churches in this City in
which there is daily service ; while a large number in
the diocese have services on one or two days during
the week, and on the greater festivals and holy days.
These last are kept in very many churches that have
no ordinary week-day services, or only at special
seasons of the year, as during Lent or Advent. Some
who had not hitherto included the Circumcision,
Ash Wednesday, and Ascension Day, among these
holy days, have willingly undertaken that they will
do so henceforth. It is gratifying to note how
successful the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral
has proved in that kind of success which its large-
hearted and large-handed restorer must most have
desired. I have before me the returns of the
number of the week-day congregations, from June

12 to Sept. 8, of the present year. These returns
give an average attendance of 148 a day, or 74 at
each service, — congregations, of course, somewhat
swollen by the many sightseers who have passed
through the City during this summer, but satisfactory
after every abatement has been made. Certainly
our people, when opportunities of week-day worship
are offered to them, are not slow to avail themselves
of them.

I rejoice to observe that the rare celebration of the
Holy Communion, only four times in the year, which
used to be so common in the country districts of
England, and has by no means yet disappeared, is
almost unknown in these dioceses. In the diocese of
Dublin there is in 101 churches a monthly cele-
bration ; in 15 churches the celebration is twice a
month ; in three it is three or four times a month ;
while there are weekly celebrations in seven. In
very nearly all of these churches there are also cele-
brations on the chief festivals ; though what the
chief festivals are, is interpreted very differently, and
sometimes, though indeed rarely, they are accounted
to include no more than Christmas Day and Easter.
In most, though not in all, of seven cases of a rarer
celebration which remain, there is something which
explains, and more or less accounts for the rarity.
In the diocese of Kildare there is a monthly celebra-
tion, generally with the chief festivals added, in every
church but five. In four out of these five there

is a celebration eight times, in one six times, in
the year.

These Communions too, for the most part, are well
attended. When we seek to measure, not merely the
extensive, but the intensive energy as well, of the
spiritual life of our people, we turn with especial
interest to the actual attendance at the Table of the
Lord. For, making full allowance for whatever there
may be of formality in this attendance — for guests, as
there will often be, merely ceremonious— there are
few sights which more gladden a faithful pastor’s
heart than a great company of communicants ; while,
on the other hand, there are few sadder and more
disappointing, than, after Common Prayer apparently
not slighted, a sermon attentively listened to, to see
nineteen -twentieths of the congregation pouring out
of the sanctuary, and leaving a little handful behind
them, scattered sparsely here and there, to com-
plete and conclude the service of Almighty God.
I am thankful to say that the attendance at Holy
Communion, very far short as it falls of what it
would be in that ideal Church toward wThich we
must yearn and labour and strive, and in which
seldom any but unconfirmed and excommunicate
would withdraw, is for the most part satisfactory.
I take Christmas Day and Easter Sunday as the
days which yield the largest returns, and I find that
on Christmas Day, 1863, (I have not been able to
sum up the later returns), there were in the diocese

of Dublin 13,861 communicants, and on Easter
Day last year 13,575 ; single churches yielding such
contributions on the two days put together as the
following : St. Stephen’s, 830 ; St. Matthias’, 1,133;
the Molyneux Asylum, 905 ; St. Anne’s, 685 ;
Monkstown, 838, with other churches in proportion.
In the diocese of Kildare there were on Christmas
Day 1,357 communicants, on Easter Day 1,438. As
the Church population of the diocese of Dublin
does not, according to the latest Parliamentary
Returns, much exceed 1 00,000, as that of Kildare is
less than 13,000, an attendance such as this, not
indeed as compared with what we desire, but with
that which we actually see elsewhere, cannot be
accounted small.

A word or two on the subject of our Communions I
would fain say, before finally leaving it. In some of
our churches the vast number of communicants to
which I have thankfully borne record, leaves no
choice to the clergyman, who perhaps has only one
to assist him in the distribution of the elements, but
to administer these to two, or perhaps to even more
at the same time. The service would not otherwise be
concluded for many hours, and many, from weakness
or other causes, would find it impossible to remain.
But this manner of distribution is sometimes adopted
under no such constraining necessity. I have known
it in use in churches where there were less than forty
communicants. To very many of our laity it is one

which, when manifestly unnecessary, is extremely
distasteful, which robs that spiritual feast for them of
much of its solemnity, of much of that joy which
otherwise they would derive from it. It is a depar-
ture from the strict letter of the Rubric, which
certainly contemplates distribution to each by him-
self— a departure in certain cases justified, because
unavoidable ; but which, when gratuitously adopted,
seems to suggest a desire upon our part to get over
the service of God at the least possible expense of
time and trouble ; than which mischief there is none
needing more carefully to be watched against, and to
be checked by us in its faintest beginnings and in its
subtlest forms. Should this be the custom in your
church, I will ask you to consider whether yours is
one of those cases in which it is imperative.

In the summer of last year I held the usual triennial
Confirmation through the whole of the two dioceses ;
and again, during Lent in the present year, the
annual Confirmation, which I also found established,
for the City of Dublin, and for one or two of the more
populous places in its immediate vicinity. There
were, at the general Confirmation, a few more than
3,000 confirmed (an oversight in my manner of
keeping the lists, due to my inexperience, hinders me
from saying exactly how many more, but 100 would
more than cover the excess), and at the special Con-
firmation, although it followed on the other with an
interval of hardly more than eight months between,

there were 759. On going over the numbers of the
confirmed during the last ten or twelve years, it is
satisfactory to find a steady and marked progress.
At the General Confirmation of 1853 there were
1,283 confirmed; at that of 1855, 1,542; in 1858,
1,878; in 1861, 1,793; while at the City Confirmation
of 1854 there were confirmed 855 ; in 1856, 1,163 ;
in 1857, 959 ; in 1859, 1,069 ; in 1860, 987 ; in 1862,
1,275. The diminution of the present year is abun-
dantly accounted for, first by the large sweep of the
previous one, and then by the fact that some new
arrangements which seemed to me desirable caused
this Confirmation to follow upon the last after an
interval, not of a year, but, as I have noticed already,
of only eight months.

I was glad to observe that there was no such serious
disparity between the numbers of one sex and of the
other, as I have sometimes remarked elsewhere — a
disparity which must always be noticed with regret,
seeming, as it does, to say, that an earnest dedication
of themselves to God may be a very proper step
for young women to take, but that young men count
it altogether needless, or at all events premature, for
them. On the contrary, the numbers of one sex
and of the other, if not quite, were nearly on an
equality. In all parts of the diocese so much in the
participation of the rite as came under my eye was
satisfactory, the arrangements well considered and
good, the outward demeanour of the candidates

serious and reverent. You, my brethren, know much
better than I can know, how much of this in those
whom you severally brought forward was super-
ficial ; how much of earnest intention to yield them-
selves to God and to his service these outward tokens
on their part represented. You know this, for you
know how much of thought and toil and prayer you
bestowed on the preparing them for this ordinance,
and, in the main, you know what amount of success
attended these efforts of yours. You too can judge
how far the impressions made on them in the
time of preparation are likely to be durable, for you
know with what amount of care you have sought,
and are seeking, to follow up these the newly
confirmed among your people; not content with
seeing them once, on the Sunday following, at
the Holy Table, but endeavouring to keep them
regular communicants, and in other ways to make
them conscious of their Church-membership, and
of all the bfessed privileges, and not less blessed
duties, which this Church-membership involves. I
know nothing which for the bringing of this about is
likely to be more profitable to them, and, at the
same time, to the whole body of your people, than to
enlist the fittest and most promising among them
in the immediate service of the Church, as teachers
in your Sunday schools, as district visitors, or in
other labours of love ; for it is very deeply im-
planted in our nature that we love that for which

we labour, that which makes claims upon us, that
which demands sacrifices from us ; that we care
comparatively little for that which ignores us, which
leaves us alone, which says plainly that it sees no
service which we are worthy or able to render to it.
Make your people work for the Church, if you wish
to make them love it.

We can look with less satisfaction at some other
features of our work. In the diocese of Dublin there
are 20 churches in which there is only one service
on a Sunday, and 20 more in which there are two
services only during the summer months ; while in
the small diocese of Kildare there are 14 -churches in
which there is only a single service on Sundays, and
nine more in which the second service is only main-
tained during the summer months. As one person,
at least, must in every house stay at home, — in large
houses often more, — one service on the Sunday is
for many of our people no service at all. I am
not ignorant of the difficulty in many of our wide
country parishes, scantily furnished with Protest-
ant inhabitants, and these often with long miles to
travel from and to their homes, of at all getting
together a second congregation upon a Sunday ;
and yet I would ask you, my reverend brethren,
seriously to consider, each in his own case, whether
a reason sufficient is thus furnished for reducing
the stated service of God to a minimum ; whether it
is not well that the worship of God’s House should go

forward, and that, be they few or many who attend it ;
how far the love of ease, or any other such motive,
may have helped to lead you to the conclusion
that it was impossible to find room for a second
service, or to get together a second congregation.
Possibly a better arrangement of times might in
many places render feasible that which now seems
impracticable. For instance, how many difficulties
and embarrassments we entail on ourselves by the
custom, which seems in some parts of the country well
nigh universal, that the morning service on the Lord’s
Day should commence at 12 o’clock — that is, in the
afternoon. What, I sometimes cannot help asking
myself, must our Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen
think of us, of our zeal for God, of our love of His
House, who cannot come together for His worship
and praise upon His own Day, until that Day is in
good part spent ? I rejoice that in many of the
Dublin churches service has been put back during
the last year to half-past 11. Half an hour thus
gained, in addition to other profit which it would
bring with it, would often render a real afternoon
service possible, where now the only alternative
is an evening service, — most inconvenient to many
during the long dark nights of winter, — or else no
service at all. It is, as you are aware, competent
to the Bishop, wherever he thinks it desirable, to
require a second service. I had much rather, in
parishes where it is so, — and I have recently heard

of some where its absence by the laity is much
deplored, and counted an abridging of their just rights,
— that it should be the free and unconstrained offer-
ing of the pastor to the spiritual needs of his flock.

Some Special Services, so called as having a special
purpose in view, have found place during the past
year. It has always seemed to me that where the
promoters of so-called revivals err, is not so much in
the premisses from which they start as in the methods
which they use for giving effect to the conclusions
which they draw from these. That Churches alike
and single souls need to have the work of God
revived within them ; that spiritual fires, though not
extinct, may yet, unless stirred from time to time,
burn very low and yield very little of vital warmth
or light ; that there are seasons when the ordinary
use of the means of grace may profitably give place
to extraordinary, brought to bear with the force of
accumulation on the soul ; this, I think, no one who
has ever so little acquaintance with his own heart,
or of the hearts of his fellow-men — with the spiritual
history of congregations or of Churches — will deny.
Then only the mischief begins, when the means
employed for this reviving of a flagging interest in
spiritual things become merely sensational, appeals
to the feelings alone, and not to what is deeper,
more abiding, and more regulative in man,; — the
kindling as of a fire among straw, to blaze up for
an instant, and then to leave nothing but black ashes

behind it, — when, instead of seeking to fill the
everlasting ordinances and sacraments of the Church
with a new life and power of the Spirit, these are
set aside altogether, and inventions of men adopted
in their room. In themselves these revivals, for I will
not be afraid of the name, present themselves to me as
good and profitable, I had almost said necessary.
With these convictions, I ventured upon an eight
days of Special Services in the summer of last year,
taking Bray for a centre, and including, so far as
possible, the neighbouring parishes in the scheme.
During this period 16 sermons were preached in
the churches of Bray, in the surrounding churches
17, the Holy Communion was celebrated daily,
and at the four early Communions addresses to
the communicants delivered. Besides this, two
Conferences of the Clergy, very numerously attended
both by those within the diocese and without, were
held during the week, and some matters intimately
concerning the welfare of the Church in the friend,
liest spirit discussed. I record with thankfulness
the hearty readiness with which both the Clergy
of the diocese and those whom I invited from
without, responded to my appeal, and took their
share in this work, as they did no less in the series
of sermons during Lent, delivered last year in St.
Peter’s, this year in St. Mary’s and St. Anne’s. The
work at Bray had so many encouraging features

about it, that, although one cause and another

hindered during the present year any attempt at
the same, I trust next year, so far as one may ven-
ture to speak of purposes so remote, to repeat the
experiment in some other part of the diocese, with
such alterations and, I hope, improvements, as the
experience which we have now gained will suggest.

The returns in respect of schools are not so
complete as I could desire ; and we do ourselves an
injustice when we omit duly to make these returns.
Making no allowance for deficient returns, I find that
in Sunday schools under the superintendence of the
Incumbent there were, in the diocese of Dublin,
12,560 Sunday scholars, while of day scholars attend-
ing parochial schools, 7,903 ; of these last 760 were
Roman Catholics. In the diocese of Kildare the
children in our Sunday schools amounted to 1,205,
while those on the roll of the daily parochial schools
were 988, of whom 86 were Roman Catholic. I have
not included in these numbers the children in Infant
schools, nor yet in schools non-parochial (generally
private), although these were superintended by the
Incumbent ; and as little the Protestant children
attending Vested National Schools, even in cases
where the school was one visited by the clergyman.

My reverend brethren will allow me to urge upon
them the extreme importance of themselves taking
a share in the teaching of the school ; above all, in
those portions of it which must always remain our
proper work. Satisfy yourselves that all whom you

admit to the privilege of assisting you in your Sunday
schools are not merely pious, but truly and heartily
well affected to the Church and her doctrines. A
young person who has conscientious objections to
teaching the Church Catechism may have many
merits, but certainly is not fit to be admitted as a
teacher in our Church schools. See that the Catechism
is thoroughly taught, and, at least to the higher classes
in the school, teach it yourselves. The returns which
I have received assure me that you do so ; but the
importance of the subject is so vast, that I will not
the less urge it upon you. Let us never forget that
the Reformation established itself at the beginning
quite as much or more through catechizing than
through preaching ; that preaching is not the way to
lay foundations, but to build a superstructure on
foundations already laid, and that if these foundations
have been slightly laid, or not laid at all, the super-
structure itself will always remain insecure. Excel-
lently well did an illustrious predecessor of mine,
who has in so many ways left his mark on the diocese,
urge this. 1 refer to Archbishop Narcissus Marsh,
who, in his Primary Triennial Visitation, 1694, presses
this duty of catechizing in these weighty words : —
“ Unless the parishioners be first of all firmly grounded
in the principles of Christianity (which is to be done
by expounding the Catechism to them so plainly that
it may be understood by all, and by inculcating it so
frequently and importunately that it can be forgotten

c 2

by none) your preaching will be almost lost upon
them ; at least they cannot profit at all so much by
hearing the Word preached as they might do, if they
were well principled in religion beforehand.”

I take this opportunity of observing how much
to be desired it is that a gap in our system of education
should be stopped, that a class too often overlooked
in our various schemes should be considered. Having
myself borne a personal share for many years both
in the management and also in the teaching of Queen’s
College, London, I am confident to say that there
could be no greater boon to this City than an insti-
tution of the like kind in it ; one, that is, for the
liberal education of young women of the upper
middle class, — and not exclusively of these, but of all,
up to the highest, whom the excellency of the tuition
given should induce to attend. How to meet the
present want is a question on which I would gladly
take counsel with such of my brethren as feel with
me how urgent it is, and how blessed a thing it would
be to supply it. Such a College, to succeed, should, as
I conceive, know no other religious teaching but that
of the Church, but at the same time should freely
admit and invite those of other communions to
profit by as much of what it offered as conscien-
tiously they could.

A grateful evidence of the activity of church-life in
the diocese of Dublin is the number of new churches
which are being built in it, or of old which, in whole

or in part, are undergoing a process of renewal ;
although it must be owned that the costly and often-
times beautiful chapels and cathedrals writh which
the Roman Catholics are everywhere covering the
land might well provoke us even to a livelier jealousy,
and to a more earnest effort not, in this matter, to be
left wholly behind. In a period of less than two
years I have had the satisfaction of consecrating
seven new churches — six of them additions to those
already existing, the seventh an old parish church
rebuilt. I have also licensed for divine service an
eighth, newly erected by the Duke of Leinster, the
consecration of which has been postponed for the
present. Besides these, other churches, as that of
Castleknock, have been re-opened, after renewals
and restorations which amounted to very little
short of rebuilding. Entirely trustworthy returns
acquaint us that in the diocese of Dublin there
were 82 churches in 1791, and 91 in 1826. It is
satisfactory as far as church-building is concerned, to
have made in less than two years very nearly as
much progress as was made half a century ago in 35.

Not to speak of others in contemplation, or which
have not yet advanced beyond the preliminary steps,
there are at the present moment three new churches
building in the diocese, and another rebuilding, or
nearly so. In one of these, namely St. Bartholomew, the
church of a parochial district formed out of St. Mary’s,
Donnybrook, and St. Peter’s, the very interesting

and important experiment will be tried of a church
with seats altogether free and unappropriated, the
Incumbent being willing to rely on the free-will
offerings of the Christian people who worship there
for his own support and for that of the service of
God’s House. Should this experiment prove suc-
cessful, as it has proved in so many places in England,
no doubt the same attempt will be made elsewhere ;
and a great step will have been taken toward
that freedom of worship which, however we may
be embarrassed now by the complications of
another system, we must all so earnestly desire.
St. Andrew’s, destroyed by fire in 1860, is slowly
but steadily advancing to completion, and when
finished, will present the gratifying spectacle of a
church on which something more of cost has been
bestowed than the bare necessities of the congrega-
tion who are to worship there would have required ;
while St. Peter’s, one of the meanest and poorest
churches in the City, while the parish is one of the
richest and most important, is in process of trans-
formation, which will leave it, not indeed all that we
could desire, but something very different from that
painful and offensive eye-sore which hitherto it has
been.

While recording what the last year or two have
seen of advance in those material fabrics, which are
as the outer shell, under the protection of which the
inner kernel of a true religion may be formed and

cherished, I must not leave unnoticed by far the most
remarkable event in this kind which has signalized
the past year ; one which may wait long before it
finds its parallel or rival here or elsewhere. It will
long be recorded in the annals of this City, and, as
“ deep calleth unto deep,” it may stir up many rich men
to a wholesome emulation in respect of the objects to
which they dedicate the wealth with which God has
entrusted them, that what the whole Church might
almost seem to have shrunk from, as a task too hard
for it to undertake, — I mean the restoration of St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, threatening as it did to become,
within a few short years, ruinous heaps, — this task
one private citizen of Dublin undertook and accom-
plished, giving back to this City its noblest monu-
ment, to the Irish Church its dearest house of prayer ;
while, almost as valuable in its kind as the gift itself,
has been the embodiment in the manner of its giving,
of the apostolic precept — “ He that giveth, with sim-
plicity.” May he who showed this kindness to the
House of the Lord find comfort, consolation, and
strength from that same Lord in every hour of trial
and distress !

A word or two here may fitly find place
concerning some of the externals of public wor-
ship, reserving for a later part of the Charge
what concerns more nearly the inner life and spirit
of our ministry.

I believe that, during the last thirty years, a vast im- *

provement has taken place, one which it is almost im-
possible to measure, in the whole manner of the public
performance of the Divine Offices both in England
and Ireland. Who, for example, that is old enough
to remember what the Psalmody in our churches
then was, and what it often is now, but must acknow-
ledge the marvellous transformation which this portion
of our worship has undergone ? But of course, as in
England, so also here, instances of carelessness and
negligence will still survive. My reverend brethren,
with the many eyes which are upon us, and even
if no eyes were upon us but the eyes of Him whom
we serve, how desirable it is that the service which
we render, that all these Divine Offices in which we
lead the worship of our people, should be reverently
and accurately performed, with that careful and exact
handling of Divine things so well expressed by the
Greek ev\a(3eia , and this no less in the remotest vil-
lage, and in the presence of half a dozen worshippers,
than in the populous Cathedrals of our metropolitan
City, — that a decent comeliness should everywhere
prevail, — that much more than this, where it may fitly
be had. I mean not that we should attempt, even
where we had the power, any rivalry with Rome in
the elaborate and scenic splendour of her worship.
This is her proper domain, and it is an ambition as
unwise as it is poor to endeavour to contend with
her here. She, whose whole worship has run so
much to the surface, sensuous and not spiritual, will

always in these things excel us. We may well
rejoice that she does so ; and she, I think, must not a
little marvel when she beholds us abandoning the true
sources of our strength, and entering into competi-
tion with her on ground and in matters where she is
sure to outdo us. But, because the preaching of the
pure word of God, and the ministration of those
sacraments which Christ has ordained and in the
manner in which He has ordained them, is the true
glory of our assemblies, there is no need, therefore,
that all, or any thing, should be mean and sordid and
repulsive about His House and the service of His
House. The extraordinary unsightliness of many of
our churches, indeed of almost all that were built
in the last century or during the first decades of the
the present ; the un ecclesiastical character of their
arrangements ; the huge wooden fortress rising up in
the centre, blocking out all view of the chancel ;
the Communion Table safely nestled under the
pulpit ; — all this, a legacy from past times, we must
accept, labouring indeed to see it gradually reme-
died and removed ; and meanwhile thanking God
that His presence and His power in the midst of us
can turn the meanest shed into a gate of heaven ;
yea, make the unsigh tliest structure in which we
ever worshipped as the Beautiful Gate of that Temple
not made with hands, in which we hope to worship
for ever. But it is not necessary in addition that the
Font should be absent ; that neglect and slovenliness

and squalour should every where be visible ; that the
furniture of the chancel should be so worn and torn
that we would not endure it in our own houses for a
single day ; or, generally, that our waiting upon the
King of kings should be less punctually performed,
and with infinitely less of reverence, than many a
fellow-man would obtain at our hands.*

The comparative fewness of glebe-houses, such as
in these dioceses one must note with regret, is not
to be traced to the troubles of the seventeenth cen-
tury ; but, as all evidence goes to prove, we have here
the results of an originally imperfect planting of the
Church, such residences having been wanting from
the beginning. It was only at a very late date that
any serious attempt was made to supply this want.
The Irish Upper House of Convocation, in 1710,
complains that there are “ no glebes in one parish in
ten while Dr. Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne, writing
so late at 1787, speaks of the u almost universal want
of glebes’’ as one of the hindrances to the spread of the
Protestant faith.t F our years later, in 1791. the entire

* How much to be regretted it is, that the church which English visitors,
who spend, perhaps, only one Sunday in Ireland, and that at Killarney, pro-
bably accept as the normal type of a church of our Establishment, should be
one of the very meanest and unsightliest of all ; its wretchedness being
the more apparent, seen as it is in the light of one of Pugin’s most
beautiful buildings, the Roman Catholic Cathedral at the same place. Could
not the church which we wait for, now after the throes of nine years some
how or other come to the birth ?

The Present State of the Church ; containing a description of its precarious
situation , and the consequent damage to the public. Fifth Edition. By Richard,
Lord Bishop of Cloyne. Dublin , 1787.

number of glebe-houses in Ireland amounted only to
355 ; by far the larger number of these being found
in the northern Provinces ; indeed at the beginning
of the present century there were only 97 in the Pro-
vinces of Dublin and Cashel together.* The number
had more than doubled in 1826 ; there were then
771 in all. Ten years later they were 829 ; the
enormous disproportion between the number in the
northern and the southern Provinces having also
considerably diminished, the former owning 466 to
363 in the latter.

The condition of things in this respect has thus
been gradually mending ; but still very much remains
to be done to remove the excuse, or sometimes the
too valid plea, for non-residence, which the absence of
such a house supplies. Thus in the diocese of Kildare
there are only 19 glebe-houses in all — that is, about
as many parishes are without as with them. In Dub-
lin, if the City were left out of account, the state of
things would be much the same. There are 45 glebe-
houses in 88 parishes. But it is much more unfavour-
able, when the City is included. In it there are not
above four or five which, by the widest interpretation,
can be accounted as such, among more than 50 bene-
ficed Clergy. At the same time in a great city like
this it may be sometimes a question whether the sums
laid out on a glebe-house would not be more profitably

Fourth Report of Ecclesiastical Inquiry , Ireland , 1837, p. 6.

added to the endowment, leaving the Incumbent to
rent such a house as best is suited to his requirements.
In the country, however, the glebe-house should no-
where be wanting.

The state of things which I have been describing
contrasts very much to our disadvantage with that
at present existing in other dioceses. Thus in
the diocese of Armagh there are 65 rectories or
vicarages, and only five of them without glebe-houses ;
37 perpetual or district curacies, 29 of which have
glebe-houses ; while in Clogher diocese, united with
Armagh, there are 41 rectories or vicarages, and all ex-
cept four have glebe-houses. We are left behind also,
though not to the same extent, by the dioceses of the
south. Thus, in the united dioceses of Cork Cloyne
and Ross the benefices are 156, the glebe-houses, built
or actually building, 85. Still it is an improvement
on the past. In the diocese of Kildare there were
only nine glebe-houses in 1791 and 13 in 1826,
against the 19 that are now ; in Dublin, 35 in 1791
and 40 in 1826, against the 50 of the present day.

Since the abolition of the Board of First Fruits we
have no fund in Ireland answering to Queen Anne’s
Bounty ; while the terms on which money for the
building of glebe-houses may be obtained from the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners are not such as have
encouraged many to apply to them for assistance. I
should rejoice to see these terms made easier, which
they might be, and the Commissioners still obtain

the same interest for their money as they now obtain
in the public funds. Let me say, however, in jus-
tice to them, that they are not competent of them-
selves, and without an Act of Parliament, to make
any alteration in these terms. It is also much to be
desired, in the case of such amended legislation, that
the actual Incumbent, from whom alone the work of
building can proceed, and who ought by all fair
means to be encouraged to undertake it, should have
more favour, or rather less disfavour, shown him
in the matter of repayment. It seems desirable,
at all events in the case of smaller benefices, that
it should be lawful to borrow three instead of two
years’ income of the benefice ; that the repayment
should be spread over a longer period, some five, or
even ten years, being added to the thirty that are
granted now ; and that in this repayment no distinc-
tion should be recognized between capital and inte-
rest, but such a sum, always the same, annually paid,
as at the end of the term should have extinguished
both; putting thus on equal footing him who pays
the first instalment and him who pays the last.

As matters now stand, the causes which I have
enumerated, together with the clumsy and costly
machinery of our dilapidation commissions, and
much uncertainty in the interpretation of the law
relating to dilapidations — leading as it does many
a clergyman almost to fear to possess a parsonage-
house, lest he should bequeath he knows not what

damnosa hcereditas to those he leaves behind, — work
as serious drawbacks to the multiplying of glebe houses
in this, as, no doubt, in other dioceses as well. Yet
some have been lately built, and others are building ;
and some of our laity have assisted in this good work ;
and many, I feel confident, if it were found advisable
to invite their assistance upon a larger scale, would
respond to such an invitation.

I am persuaded, my reverend brethren, that you
will agree with me, when 1 say, that there are few
questions which offer so many practical difficulties as
the right adjustment of our relations to our Roman
Catholic brethren, — the due fulfilment of the duties
which, as Christ’s witnesses and ambassadors, we owe
to them. We are bound to believe, — we do, I trust,
from our hearts believe and are sure, — that we
have treasures in possession, which, as they have
made us rich, so would make rich no less all who
became partakers of them ; but how to induce those
in the midst of whom we live, with whom we buy
and sell, and exchange daily all the common cour-
tesies of life, to receive these at our hands — this is
the question which we find so difficult to solve.

In the way of this there are, first, the obstacles
growing out of our own indolence, our fear of men,
our imperfect acquaintance with the points really at
issue between the Churches, our insufficient hold in
our own hearts of those precious truths which are pecu-
liarly our own, our too inadequate sense of the price-

less value which these truths possess. And then, as
there are these hindrances on our own side, so upon
theirs, prejudices which have been carefully instilled
into them from infancy, with an immense ignorance in
respect of what we really hold. This ignorance, any-
how difficult to overcome, is every day becoming more
difficult, through those lines of non-intercourse be-
tween them and us, which those in high places in the
Roman Catholic Church are ever drawing sharper
and stronger and more defined — prudently, it may
be, even though they thus reveal the alarm with
which they contemplate any coming in contact of
their people with ours. Nor may we leave out of
sight, when counting up these obstacles, that if, even
in man’s present fallen estate, there are aspects of
the truth which attract and allure him, so also
there are others which irritate and repel, which stir
up the pride, the self-righteousness of the old man,
and which rouse to active resistance against that
truth and against those who bring it.

With so many hindrances within and without, it
is only too easy for us to acquiesce in doing nothing,
in not so much as attempting to do anything for our
Roman Catholic brethren ; and forgetting, in part at
least, the vow of our ordination, to persuade our-
selves that not merely our primary, but our sole, com-
mission is to those of our own communion. And yet
can we of the Church of Ireland admit that this is
the case ? For myself I must rejoice in such a visible

protest against this doctrine as, for example, our
successful missions in West Connaught present.

It is, indeed, a matter to me of sincere regret that,
many hindrances intervening, I have not as yet seen
with my own eyes that remarkable work of con-
version in West Connaught, which has now stood the
test of some five and twenty years. The reality and
extent of other works of conversion have been some-
times called in question, few or none have ventured
to call in question this. Visitors out of number have
inspected, some among them have jealously scruti-
nized, the work ; and, this done, have given their
well weighed, not a few their authoritative, testimony
to its genuine character, — -have not unfrequently
declared how far it exceeded any expectations which
they had formed, that not the half, or nearly the
half, had been told them.

The West Connaught Endowment Society, ren-
dered necessary by the very success of this mission, has
earnest claims on the liberality of Churchmen. I say
this, hoping my words may reach a much wider
circle than that of my immediate hearers. Let them
form what opinion they may on Irish Church Missions
in general ; let these, and the method of conducting
these, commend themselves to them or not, here is a
simple fact, — that multitudes have been brought from
the obedience of Rome into the communion of our
Church, that their numbers have far outrun the
means of grace which had been before provided, or

which they out of their deep poverty could provide
for themselves. They may justly claim from us that
they should not be left destitute of these.*

But eminent as that success was and is, it stands too
much alone, in some sort the circumstances under
which it was obtained were too exceptional, to assist
us much in determining how our relations to our
Homan Catholic fellow-countrymen shall be most
fruitful in good to them, how we shall so bear our-
selves toward them as shall most tend to bring some
of them to be partakers of like precious faith with
ourselves. It is very little which on this matter I
can say, and yet I would not willingly leave that
little unsaid.

I need not, of course, remind you of that which
must underlie all other efforts which we make, that
without which we shall throw down far more than
ever we can hope to build up, namely, the winning of
those on the contrary part, so far as this may be done,
“ without the word f by that silent, and yet, at the
same time, most eloquent preaching of all, the bringing
about of that in our own lives, and in the lives of our
people, which shall compel those who behold us and
them to confess that God is with us of a truth. This
before everything else : but what more we shall do,
and how fulfil that witness for Christ as sole and
supreme King and Priest and Prophet in 11 is own

* See Note A (Appendix).

Church, which we are set in this land to bear, I
rather ask you seriously to consider yourselves, than
attempt to make, with my brief experience, any dis-
tinct suggestions of my own. Only I would say that
should you at any time think good to challenge to
controversy, or should you be challenged to it (this
last, as things now stand, is most unlikely), there are
two or three points which in the conduct of it ought
never to be forgotten.

And first, if dispute we must upon the mysteries
of our faith (and there are times when this cannot
be avoided), let us give good heed that holy things,
the proper subjects for awed meditation and devout
prayer, be not dragged as in the mire, tossed
backward and forward in debate which, without
meaning to be profane, hardly escapes, if indeed it
does escape, from becoming so. I need not remind
you what wisdom, what self-restraint, what a con-
stant and awful sense of God’s presence, of His
majesty, are required, if we would escape a mischief
which lies so near to all earnest debates by eager
disputants on the higher mysteries of our faith.

Then, secondly, let no excesses of doctrine which
they of the contrary part may have run into upon
one side drive us into corresponding excesses on the
other side, as though the furthest from Rome were
itself, and of necessity, the nearest to the truth. The
Church of Rome holds far too much of Divine truth,
however miserably overlaid with human error, to

make this any other than a course of extreme danger.
Because she has set a false emphasis on works,
mixing them up with the grounds of our justification,
and making them a causa regnandi , let us not he
afraid to lay a true, and affirm of them that they
are the via regni. Because she has taught a carnal
presence of Christ in His sacrament, let us not deny
altogether the mystery of His presence there.

And, thirdly, let us never forget how delicate at
once and perilous a task it is, to disengage an error in
the mind of another from the truth around which it
clings. The ivy which has twined round a tree may
impede and stunt its growth ; yet better this than
that in the heedless violence of a rude attempt to
detach it, both should perish together ! It is a task
not lightly to be undertaken, the denying to be
worthy of reverence that which is held in reverence
by any other soul, lest we kill the reverence out-
right, while we meant only to transfer it from an
unworthy object to a worthy. To intrude into that
which for another man is his only sanctuary, and to
cast down, if we can, what he worships there, may
be sometimes a task and office most necessary to be
done, most blessed for both ; yet it is always a
most awful one ; lest the sanctuary itself should have
been laid waste for ever, no other occupying the vacant
pedestal, but all things henceforward for that man
common and profane. A heathen moralist could feel
and teach as much, using, as he does, a memorable

d 2

comparison, to wit, that it is here as with ruinous
houses of men which adjoin temples of the gods ;
which need therefore to be carefully and cautiously
pulled down, lest, in pulling down what was man’s,
that which is God’s be drawn into the same ruin as
well.

But one thing more: if words of this wisdom are
needful, what still more need that they be also words
of love. How easy it is in religious controversy to
speak cutting words — words which shall rankle like
barbed arrows in the heart of an opponent ; the
sacred ness in his eyes of that which we assail, its
preciousness to him, the honour in which, whether
rightly or wrongly, he holds it, making triumphs of
this kind only too easy to obtain. But, when we
have won these triumphs, have we thereby won them
to our truth whom we desired to win, or are we
nearer to the winning ? With much which is worst
that we have thus roused in their minds, have we not
also roused something which is best, and that best, in
an indignation natural and not altogether unjust,
arrayed more resolutely, I may say more fiercely,
against us than ever ? Oh for that forbearance of
love, which, without weakness, without keeping back
one word which may require to be spoken, shall yet
refrain from every needlessly provoking word, from
all which would thus enlist at once what is worst and
what is best in those whom we desire to win, against
us and against the truth to the obedience of which

we would bring them ! Whether the deep wounds of
Christendom will ever be healed, is only too doubtful ;
but they certainly will not be healed till a mightier
spirit of forbearing love is poured out on all the
Churches ; and those which have most of the truth
ought also to have most of the love.

But perhaps I am addressing some, who have other
forms of opposition, and from quarters where they had
less right to expect it, with which to contend ; those
brought up within the Church’s own bosom, of her
own household, making divisions, and unsettling the
minds of her children, even where they have not drawn
them quite away. Should so great a trial as this be
ours, the first thing, as it seems to me, which it
demands of us, is earnest heart-searching and enquiry,
whether and how far we have drawn it upon ourselves
by any coldness, carelessness, negligence, or omissions
in our own ministry. I speak not here of total neglect,
but of that which may fall very short of this. Have
time, and routine, and custom, and the slow but steady
action of the world, little by little dulled and abated
the edge of our spirits ? Is it that our words, still
true as in time past, are not lively any more, not
words of life and power, not words evidently steeped
in prayer, coming from the heart, and so going to
the heart ? Our people may have been longing for
such, longing under the sense of sin and of sin’s
intolerable burden, for more about Christ, for a
ministry which should make Him more its sun and

centre, while we have only too partially satisfied their
desire. If it has at all been thus, surely what we
have first to do is, less to find fault with others, than
to humble ourselves, to acknowledge that if the sheep
are being scattered, if strange doctrines, perilous at
the least, are finding favour with them, very much of
the guilt of this is ours.

But this done, and having made due and unre-
served confession of our fault in this matter, having,
so to speak, renewed our vows, how shall we keep
those who are still with us, faithful to that spiritual
mother who is so much better able than any other
to bless them ; how hope to bring back, after a little
while, those who have wandered from her ? It is
too large a subject to enter upon here in any detail.
Only I w’ould make one general observation, namely,
that as all experience shows, the errors which exercise
the mightiest attraction, which are the strength of
the sectary, are almost always the exaggeration of
truths, the pushing of these so far, with the leaving
out of the compensating truth upon the other side,
as to transform truths themselves into errors, or at
least to give them the operation of such. When
such is the case, there is a mistake only too common
on the part, of those who are seeking to redress the
disturbed balances of the truth; which let us beware
of falling into. We do fall into it, when, because
others drive a truth too hard, exaggerate, caricature it,
we therefore, on our part, make only a grudging and

niggardly admission of it, subtracting from it as
much as we dare, and keeping it as much in the back
ground as we can. It is unwisely so done. Rather let
us magnify that very truth, only magnifying it aright,
presenting to men the whole body of Christian doc-
trine, not presenting one limb only and calling it the
the body. It is the inestimable value of a theological
training that it teaches us the relative value of truths,
the proportions of the faith. They who have drawn
some of our people aside, speak much, it may be, of
the joy and peace in believing. What more true ?
l)o not let us deny or grudgingly admit it ; rather
let us magnify the same, only not allowing our people
to forget that there are other Scriptures such as this,
“ If ye call on the Father, who, without respect of
persons, judgeth according to every man’s work, pass
the time of your sojourning here in fear.” They tell
their hearers of the Christian’s freedom from the law.
A glorious freedom indeed ! But if we would proclaim
it as St. Paul did, we shall not fail to add that the
end of this very freedom is, that the righteousness of
the law may be fulfilled in us ; that we, to use the
fine distinction of Augustine, not any more sub lege ,
should yet move henceforward cum lege and in lege ,
with the law as the inseparable companion of our life,
in the law as the sphere of holy walking appointed
for us.

I approach a subject now, which if I approach
with apprehension, it is yet, I hope, with no

unworthy apprehension — not mainly fearing lest
words that I speak should prove unpopular and un-
palatable to some whose good opinion I greatly
prize, whom I honour so much that I cannot dissent
from them without pain ; but, as I trust, fearing
above every other fear, lest any suggestion of mine
should work otherwise than for the profit of this
Church, for the honour of God, and for the welfare of
those precious souls which have been by Him com-
mitted to its training. What the difficulties are, which
at this day beset for us the question of Education, how
hard it is to determine in the present entanglement of
things, what course the Church ought now to pursue,
— who can be ignorant of this ? Who, too, can remem-
ber without sadness for the past, without something of
misgiving for the future, that the question on which
we are entering is one which has arrayed upon oppo-
site sides, partially estranged from one another,
gathered almost into hostile camps, some of the
noblest spirits of our Church ; that it is a question
which now for more than the third part of a century
has divided and weakened us, who, with so many
enemies without, have such urgent need to be of
one mind among ourselves.

In dealing with the subject of National Education,
one who has only recently had his lot cast in Ireland
labours under some serious disadvantages, but pos-
sesses at the same time some advantages which may
in part compensate for these. To speak of his advan-

tages first. He has committed himself to nothing.
Whatever course he adopts or recommends, it can-
not be contrasted to his disparagement with any
previous course which lie has taken, with any previous
opinions which he has uttered. He has given no
pledges in the past to embarrass him for the future.
He has but the perplexities of the present to deal
with. But his disadvantages also are great and many;
above all, if, as in the present instance, the subject-
matter on which an opinion must be expressed is a com-
plex one — having passed through several phases — with
nothing short of a history of its own, with Concordats
attempted, negotiations carried to a certain point and
then broken off, and all the shifting incidents which
attend a protracted struggle. All this history, which
is familiar to those who have lived through the
conflict, which has insensibly and without an effort
become a portion of their knowledge, he has to learn
at once — probably to learn imperfectly at the best ;
failing to realize always the relative value of events,
or fully to enter into the feelings which animated
and pervaded struggles in which he did not share.

Not for these reasons only, but as knowing that I
must move among fires, which, though they may not
now burn as once they did, are burning still, I have
been sometimes tempted to avoid this subject alto-
gether. Well-wishers have advised as much. Yet 1
could not satisfy myself so doing. I ought to have
some opinion on a subject with which the dearest

interests of our Church are so inextricably inter-
woven ; and having, I ought not to shrink from
avowing it.

And first, while I can enter to the full into the
feelings of the clergy of Ireland, who saw, in 1831,
the whole education of the people of Ireland suddenly
taken out of their hands ; while I can quite under-
stand their inability at once to realize and to adapt
themselves to a new condition of things, in which
their part was so limited and so subordinate, I ought
not at the same time to shrink from saying that, so
far as I can judge, I should have accepted the assist-
ance of the State with the conditions which it
imposed ; that I should not have counted this a sin,
any more than I should now be acting against my
conscience in accepting the same assistance ; which,
were I the minister of a parish, where I could not
support a thoroughly good school from other sources,
I should certainly do. I have been the more con-
firmed in this conclusion, the more familiar I have
become with the narrow ill- ventilated room, the insuffi-
cient educational appliances, the inadequately trained
master, which oftentimes in our poorer parishes are
all that the minister who has refused this help, with
all his efforts, has been himself able to provide. So
doing, I should then have hoped, though the hope
would be much feebler now, — for much which was
then fluent and plastic has since assumed fixed and
rigid forms, and there may be as much to pay for the

three Sibylline books at last as would have bought the
nine at the first, — that such parts of the system as
galled and offended might little by little be modified
bv those working within it, while the same persons
would be altogether powerless, merely protesting
against the whole scheme from without. But while
thus accounting the policy of standing aloof and pro-
testing a mistake, it is quite another thing to esteem
the system of education then established the best
which, under the conditions of Ireland, could have
been introduced. I do not urge here that it has
failed to obtain the confidence of the larger body of
our clergy ; for, as I have myself considered that it
might have obtained their adhesion, even though it
failed to secure their full attachment, I have debarred
myself from this. But leaving this aside, I am per-
suaded that the system which Parliament has sanc-
tioned as the best for England, and according to which
it there distributes the funds which it allocates to
national education, would have been the best also
for Ireland; assistance, that is, to all religious bodies
in the measure and degree of their own exertions,
the State not interfering in any way in the conduct
of the schools, and only requiring their managers in
each case to satisfy it that all the elements of an effi-
cient secular education, and one which should train
loyal subjects to itself, were imparted ; but this done,
leaving to them uncontrolled power to bring every
part of the instruction which they gave within the

sphere of religion, leaving to us unrestricted use of
the Scriptures and Church formularies, to the Roman
Catholics whatever corresponding privileges would
justly be theirs.

It may be urged, and it is urged by some whose
opinion is entitled to the greatest weight, that any
such system of grants would leave unprovided with
means of education our poorer Protestant children,
in parishes where they exist in numbers too small
of themselves to constitute a school. It would be
manifestly out of the question, as these justly urge, to
expect the aid of the State for half a dozen children ;
if obtained, it would go but a very little way; not to
say that this number, or twice this number, would be
too small for any efficient education in common. I
cannot shut my eyes to this difficulty, the seriousness
of which appears to me hardly apprehended to the
full by some advocates of a change in the manner in
which grants are made ; nor do I myself see any
entirely satisfactory way of escape from it. And yet
the difficulty, so far as it is one of money, might
be overcome. The liberality of Protestant Church-
men,— relieved as in good part they would then be,
through sharing in the national grant, from charges
which they now voluntarily incur, — might very well
create a fund to meet these cases ; which cases, let
it also be remembered, would not then for the most
part be first created. They exist already, in many
parishes of exactly this character, through the refusal

of the clergy, and of those whom they influence,
whether that refusal be wise or unwise, to make any
use of the National Schools. It might, too, be very
well worth the considering, whether it would not be
possible to turn to account here some endowments
already existing, which, devoted to Protestant educa-
tion, and tied to no particular locality, are doing
very little efficient work where they are now
employed.

Moreover, such an embarrassment in respect of
some of our own children in the three Provinces, and,
possibly, here and there of Roman Catholic children
in Ulster, would altogether fail to arise, if the pre-
sent system were maintained in its integrity in all
parishes or districts where there was not a sufficient
number of each communion, of Protestants on one
side, and of Roman Catholics on the other, to main-
tain two schools ; and if grants to religious bodies, as
such, were only made, where a sufficient number, not
of one communion, but of both, were to be found to
constitute for each a separate school of its own.
The Committee of Council on Education appear, as
regards England, to be now adopting in their Con-
sciences Clause exactly such a course as this. Where
there is evidently in a district only room enough for
one school, they will not make a grant to the reli-
gious body which may be numerically the superior,
without engagements upon its part that the school
shall be so conducted as to allow those that are in the

religious minority to avail themselves of it. What-
ever hardship there may be in the insisting upon this
condition, it is one which, on the other side of the
Channel, falls mainly, I believe exclusively, upon
the Church of England. Here the Roman Catholics
would probably count themselves the most aggrieved
by it. But if the imposition of this condition of
assistance is equitable on one side of the Channel, it
must also be equitable on the other.

It must be freely owned that such a modification of
the National System as would follow even upon the
adoption of this last suggestion, would constitute a
serious encroachment on the principle of mixed
education; although one not at all so serious as the
proposed endowment of a purely Roman Catholic
Queen’s College, with the same privilege as the three
Queen’s Colleges already existing, of obtaining
degrees from the Queen’s University, — a step which
can hardly fail to draw after it, whether for good or
ill, an abandonment of the whole system. But,
indeed, mixed education exists already much more in
name than in reality, however little this may be
recognized in England.*

The great hold which our present system of
National Education has upon the English people,
and through them upon the House of Commons,
with which virtually the decision of this, as of

* See Note B (Appendix).

every other important question, ultimately lies — so
that even a partial modification of it according to
the wishes of the Church, has hitherto been inex-
orably denied — is the wide-spread belief in England,
that it is a system of united education : — that is,
that Protestant and Roman Catholics, in very large
numbers, and in all parts of the country, learn at the
same schools, and, thus brought together in childhood
and early youth, gradually unlearn the prejudices,
antipathies, mutual injustices in regard of one an-
other, which a separate education might engender,
or at any rate suffer to continue to exist ; that
there is thus bringing about a wholesome fusion and
gradual blending with one another of the mem-
bers of the two Confessions. Adopting, as England
has done, a system of denominational grants for
herself, — believing, therefore, that this in itself
is the best, she has yet maintained a different
one in Ireland ; as seeing, I cannot doubt, in
our unhappy religious divisions, and in the neces-
sity of using all lawful means for the abating of
these, exceptional circumstances which warranted
this exceptional treatment. It was the hope and
expectation of bringing about such a blending
together and fusing of all our people which animated
the original founders of this system. Despite of
limited and partial successes here and there, this
grand hope of theirs has been defeated, and every
day it is becoming more impossible to conceal the

fact of a defeat. Step by step the Board have
been compelled to modify the system, to give
ampler and still ampler scope to the religions con-
victions of the patrons of the schools or of the
great majority of those who attend them ; till
their schools are more and more becoming denomi-
national schools in fact ; though, at the same time,
hampered and embarrassed with innumerable restric-
tions, which the conscientious endeavours of the
Commissioners to prevent them from becoming such
altogether, still to preserve them as places of possible
education for all, have imposed upon them. Thus,
in many of our towns, there are two schools within a
stone-throw of one another, both in connexion with
the Board, one under a Protestant patron and without
a single Roman Catholic, the other under a Roman
Catholic patron, and without a single Protestant in
it ; but both alike hampered and embarrassed by
rules and restrictions which effectually hinder their
managers from carrying out their ideal of education,
from putting their whole heart and soul into that
part of the education which they count immea-
surably to surpass in importance all the remainder,
from making this, and the spirit of this, to inter-
penetrate all.

Such a compromise as has been here suggested,
namely, separate grants where there is room enough
for two schools, grants on the present system to con-
tinue where there is not, would, T am well aware,

thoroughly satisfy nobody, for it would give a com-
plete triumph to nobody ; but it is by such compro-
mises, by such temperaments between two extremes,
that struggles and controversies of long standing are
commonly brought to a close.

In the late Session, many matters were discussed in
Parliament, and some measures passed, which affected
very nearly the well-being of the United Church of
England and Ireland ; nor were there wanting those
in which we of the Irish branch claimed the nearest
interest of all.

To speak, first, of those which were common to us
and to the sister branch of the Church in England: —

A Bill was introduced by a Roman Catholic mem-
ber of the Lower House for the relief of Roman
Catholics from the Oath by which they now engage
themselves not to use any powers which they may
acquire by their admission to a seat in Parliament, or
to any office from which they were excluded before
the passing of the Relief Bill, for the injury of the
Established Church ; and this Bill, having passed
through that House, was brought into the Upper.
There was no attempt on the part of the advocates of
this measure to controvert the statement that this
Oath was one of the so-called Securities offered by
the Relief Bill, and one without which it could never
have become law. As little was it denied that those
who framed this Oath, now proclaimed so insulting
to Roman Catholics, were themselves Roman Catholic

theologians of highest standing in their Church; that
the Oath itself, or a similar one, had been in fact by
them suggested as a means of finally removing from
the minds of Protestants any suspicion tha^t they
desired to turn the power which they should thus
acquire against the Church, indeed for ever to pre-
clude them from so doing. I could have been well
content to see removed from this Oath everything
which might justly be regarded as offensive,— which,
calling on Roman Catholics expressly to disclaim
certain monstrous opinions, seemed to imply that
they could possibly hold them. But I did not see
any reason why we should deprive ourselves of the
protection, whatever that may be worth, which this
engagement on their part affords. Of some value it
undoubtedly is, seeing that if not a majority, yet
several Roman Catholic members have so interpreted
the Oath as to prevent them from voting in favour
of any measure which in their judgment might
injuriously affect our Establishment. The Bill, as
you are aware, was rejected, and I felt it my duty to
be one of those who voted for its rejection.

Another measure, the Clerical Subscription Act,
simplifying this Subscription, abating what seemed
to some the extreme and undue rigidity of the form
in which it had hitherto been required, and making
one and the same the Subscription in England
and Ireland, thus legally recognizing the Church in
Ireland as an integral part of the United Church,

received the royal assent during the last Session. It
had a double interest for the Irish branch of the United
Church — one interest which we shared in common
with ojir English brethren, another which was peculi-
arly our own. As regarded the first, we could only
desire heartily to join with them in helping forward a
measure, which had united the suffrages of so many
well-wishers of the Church ; with which those who
had long complained of an unnecessary stringency in
the terms of the Subscription hitherto demanded,
declared themselves satisfied ; in which those who were
most jealous of the Church’s faith, and that none
should minister at her altars except such as heartily
accepted her doctrines, could see no dangerous
laxity.

But while this measure was thus in itself accept-
able to all prudent Churchmen, there was that in
the manner of the passing of it against which your
representatives in Parliament felt themselves bound
to protest. To the English Convocations there was
given an opportunity of altering and amending
their Canons, so to bring them into harmony with the
new legislation. No such opportunity was offered
to the Irish Convocation. As soon as it became
evident, from an answer of the Lord President of the
Council to a question which I felt it my duty to put
to him, that Her Majesty’s Ministers had no inten-
tion of conceding to us such an opportunity, your
representatives in Parliament found themselves not

e 2

slightly embarrassed in regard of the course which
it behoved them to pursue. Even had the Govern-
ment been willing to advise Her Majesty to grant
to the Irish Church, by her lawful Assemblies,
privileges similar to those accorded to the English,
this at that late period of the Session, would have
involved either the deferring of the entire measure
to another year, or an immediate legislation for the
English branch of the Church alone, leaving the case
of Irish Subscription to be dealt with at some other
day, and by a separate enactment. The latter course
was regarded by many of the best friends of the
Irish Church with great alarm, as a precedent fraught
with extreme danger for the future. On the
other hand, any endeavour on our part to delay
in toto the passing of a measure, accepted on all sides
as a happy settlement of difficulties which at any
moment might become serious and troublesome,
would have been most unwelcome, and have placed
us in a very false position indeed.

It was impossible to shut our eyes to this ; above
all when our brethren on the English Bench in-
formed us with all plainness that they could not
sanction or support, but must oppose, any course
which would involve the postponement of the English
Bill. While I mention this, I at the same time
thankfully bear witness to the cordial assistance
which by their counsel they gave us, which by their
votes (had it been advisable to push matters to

an extremity) they were prepared to give us,
in claiming for our branch of the Church that in
this and in all other matters it should be dealt with
on exactly the same footing as their own. I am
am confident to affirm that no greater injustice can
be done to those who occupy the foremost places in
the English Church, than to suspect that they have
any desire to separate their fortunes from ours,
and to seek their own safety in this separation.
The significance, the importance, the perils of
our position, thrown, as we are, into the forefront of
the one great conflict which is before the Anglican
Church — the conflict with Rome — they recognize to
the full ; and whatever dangers may await us in
the future, we have not to fear, I am sure, any
unworthy abandonment upon their parts. Under
the conditions which I have just related, we did not
count it advisable to offer our fruitless opposition to
the passing of the Bill, contenting ourselves with a
protest against the unequal treatment of our branch
of the Church in the manner of the passing of it,
a protest which was afterwards entered by us in the
Journals of the House.

The Endowment and Augmentation of Small
Benefices Amendment Act, assimilating the law of
church-building and of church-endowment in Ireland
to that in England, will, I trust, be found a useful
measure, and give an impulse to the erecting and
endowing of new churches with parochial districts

attached. Under 23 & 24 Viet., cap. 7 2, provisions
were made for the augmentation of Small Benefices
in Ireland, and for the acquisition of the patronage of
the same, by enabling ecclesiastical persons possessed
of the patronage to vest that patronage in Trustees, in
consideration of the perpetual endowment of such
Benefices. This Act, however, was only applicable to
cases where there was already an existing Benefice
capable of being endowed, and a fund ready prepared
for its endowment; but failed to meet the class of cases
in which it was proposed to constitute a new Benefice,
provided an endowment could be procured for it ;
and where parties were willing to subscribe to a fund
for endowment, provided the patronage of the Bene-
fice, when constituted, were ensured to them or their
nominees. The ecclesiastical patrons of small Bene-
fices are now, by the Amendment Act, enabled to
enter into binding contracts with parties desirous of
endowing and obtaining the patronage of such Bene-
fices, in all cases where the proposed arrangements
cannot be immediately carried out.

What occurred in Belfast will show the necessity
of such a measure as this. The Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners having consented, in order to meet the
want of church-accommodation there, to build five
new churches, one in each year, for five successive
years, upon condition of sites and endowments for
the churches being provided, a Society had been
formed, and funds raised for these purposes, one of

the fundamental rules of the Society being that the
patronage of each church endowed by the Society
should be vested in trustees nominated by it. The
Commissioners would not commence building, unless
the Society unconditionally bound itself to endow the
church when built, which the Society could not do,
unless the patronage were absolutely assured to it.
Under 23 & 24 Viet., this could not be legally
effected, as the transfer of the patronage could not
take place, or be secured, until the church was built ;
while, on the other hand, the Vicar of Belfast, in whom
the patronage, in the first instance, vests, was unable
to bind his successor ; and it was of course uncertain
whether the present Vicar would be Vicar, or the
present Bishop would be Bishop, when the church
had been built and the Benefice constituted. A most
important work for the spiritual welfare of a town
which contains upwards of 30,000 Episcopalians, had
thus been brought to a standstill, but now that this
Bill has become law, is again vigorously proceeding.
The first stone of one of these churches has been
already laid.

Before leaving this part of the subject, I may just
mention that a Bill was introduced into the Upper
House toward the close of the Session, to alter the
manner of estimating the Tithe Rent-charge. Many
will share the surprise which I could not but feel, that,
in a matter so nearly affecting the temporal interests
of the Irish Clergy, (I understand the operation of the

Bill would have been unfavourable to them,) no com-
munication whatever was made either to the Primate
or to myself, or, so far as I can learn, to any one of
the Irish Bishops, to acquaint us that such a Bill
was proposed — had indeed been actually brought in.
For myself, I did not discover such a Bill to be in
progress, till it had been already read a second time
in the House of Lords. At that time the close of the
Session, which was so near as of itself to forbid any
further advance, rendered any other opposition
superfluous.

The Ecclesiastical Courts and Registries Acts (Ire-
land), 1864, gave power to the two Archbishops to
frame Rules and Orders, which, after they had been
approved by the Lord Lieutenant in Council, should
henceforth govern the procedure and practice of the
Ecclesiastical Courts and Registries in Ireland. The
Primate and myself committed the preparation of these
Rules and Orders to Dr. Stephens, as to one whose
thorough acquaintance with the Ecclesiastical Law of
Ireland, and well-proved interest in the prosperity
of the Irish Church, fitted him better than any other
for this task. By these Rules and Orders innumerable
inequalities of fees, which, justifiable by no reason,
had gradually grown up, have been removed.
Twenty-six separate Courts and Registries, all inde-
pendent of one another, with no machinery to bring
them into unison, have been reduced to 12. The
procedure and practice in these Courts has been

rendered uniform and simplified, and the fees greatly
reduced in favour of the clergy and laity. Checks
to frivolous litigation and suits merely for the pur-
poses of annoyance have been introduced. Hitherto
the Clergy have been frequently subjected to great
expense for the attendance of Registrars to ad-
minister oaths and other mere formal matters. To
prevent such an abuse it is now provided that any
episcopal act, not required to be done in Court, but at
which the presence of a Surrogate, Registrar, or any
other officer is required, may at the discretion of the
Bishop be done in the presence of a priest in holy
orders, or a solicitor, on the spot. Again, in lieu of
all other fees, costs, and charges for Letters of Orders
of Priests or Deacons, there will only have to be paid
to the Registrar a fee of ten shillings.

I spoke just now of the inequalities of fees. They
were in fact, in their little sphere, nothing short of
enormous injustices, such as, I think, every right*
minded man must rejoice to see redressed, the richer
livings often paying little and the poorer much. Let
me instance a few cases in point : —

In the diocese of Derry, the visitation fees of
the Incumbent of Maghera, with an income for stamp
duty of £1,214 17s. 6d. (and, after all deductions
made, of £846 18s., as in Captain Stacpoole’s
Return) were only 7s. 8d. ; while the fees payable
by the Incumbent of Carndonagh on a like income
of £317 11s. lid. (after all deductions made, of

£269 15s. 2d.) were £3 6s. 9d.* In the diocese of
Armagh, the Incumbent of Mansfieldstown with a net
income of £191 10s. 3d. was liable for £1 13s. lOd. ;
while the Incumbent of Termon McGuirke with an
income for stamp duty of £995 10s. lOd. (and, after
all deductions made, of £803 Is. 3d.) was only liable
for 13s. 8d. In the diocese of Cloyne, the Incum-
bent of Garrycloyne with an income for stamp duty
of £1,097 Is. lid. (after all deductions made, of
£806 11s. lid.) was only liable for 9s. 4d. ; while
the Incumbent of Mallow upon a like income of
£400 9s. 7d. (and by the same deductions reduced to
£349 9s. 8d.) was liable for £3 10s. In the diocese
of Limerick the Incumbent of Croom, whose income
for stamp duty is £904 Is. (or after the deductions,
£708 3s. 5d.) was only liable for 16s. 4d. ; while the
Incumbent of Dysart with a net income of £52 16s. 9d.
was answerable for £1 9s. ; and other examples, in
like kind, might be multiplied ad infinitum. It was
the same in respect of fees for Institution.

These things being so, I am content to wait for
the time when these Rules and Orders shall be better
understood, their substantial justice recognized, and
the manifold ways in which they constitute a relief
and boon to the Clergy, practically felt. Nor will I
add more than a single word before quitting an un-
grateful theme. If in the adjustment of a complex

* See Note C (Appendix).

and difficult matter any unintentional wrong has been
inflicted upon any, or unnecessary charge imposed, I
have the Primate’s authority for saying, and I add
to this my own assurance, that we shall hold our-
selves prepared, on this being shown, to use the power
we possess, before another year comes round, for the
redressing of this wrong, or lightening of this charge.

There seems a general expectation that in the next
Session of Parliament the direct attacks upon our
Church, suspended during the last, will be renewed.
F or myself, I hardly anticipate that in it there will be
more than slight and desultory assaults. The pulse
of the new Parliament will be felt, the temper of its
new members ascertained, and from these and other
symptoms auguries will be drawn of the likelihood of
success which will attend a more serious attack, and
from what quarter and in what shape it will be
advisable to make it. But though the regular assault
may thus be delayed a little, it will assuredly arrive.
In the prospect of this there are certain courses for
us which prudence and duty seem alike to dictate.

And first, as I have said already, we cannot, I
think, be too desirous that everything should be
known about us, or give too much diligence every-
where to diffuse this knowledge; and this, I would
venture to hope, not always in the shape of apology
and excuse; of which, as it seems to me, we have had
quite enough. Many weak points, many anomalies
in our condition will thus no doubt be revealed ; but

these as nothing compared to those with which ignor-
ance, or sometimes malice, credits us now.* Thus,
what room is there for misunderstanding in the very
natural confusion which those unversed in our eccle-
siastical affairs continually make between the civil
parish and the ecclesiastical Benefice ; what room for
misstatement on the part of those who know better, but
are eager to make the worst possible case against us.
The Church Institution has already done us excellent
service in diffusing this information in England, and
is only desirous to know in what ways it can render
to us the most effectual help. The organization of
the Society, let me add, is fully sanctioned by all the
Archbishops and Bishops of England and Ireland.

And then, further, we should testify our willing-
ness— and this not in word only, but in act — to
see things set right which are really amiss in our
condition, which are hindering us from effectually ful-
filling the objects 'for which we exist; not allowing
little selfishnesses and private aims and ends to lead
us to oppose measures which would be manifestly
for the general good of the Church. In every insti-
tution of long standing anomalies will grow up.
Time is so great an innovator, shifts and changes so
much, that what perfectly fitted a past age, will often
very imperfectly fit our own. The only wisdom, and
indeed the only safety, is to recognize this betimes,

See Note D (Appendix).

and the duties which it imposes. Thus, among
anomalies which it were well if they were mitigated, —
wre cannot hope to see them quite removed, — earnest
Churchmen might seriously consider whether it would
not be possible hereafter to transfer the occasional
too much of income in some of our parishes as com-
pared with the work to be done, to other places where
our people are many, but the endowment too little,
indeed miserably inadequate to the spiritual neces-
sities of the case. I am well aware of the immense
danger which would attend any attempt upon a large
scale to remove tithe, or the rent- charge which
represents tithe, from the place where it accrues, and
to transfer it somewhere else. To chop the old up.
small, and to fling it as into Medea’s cauldron, in
the hopes that a new creation will come forth, is a
hazardous experiment, which has not always suc-
ceeded, which might not succeed here. But keeping
altogether aloof from the rashness of such experi-
ments, something might with caution be effected for
redressing cases of extreme disproportion between
the work and its temporal reward.

Again, we ought not to resist a legislation, which
should have for its object a doing away in the future
of some of those superfluous titles which convey the
notion of a wealth, splendour, and extent in our
Establishment, quite foreign to its real poverty and
depression. A member of Parliament, in an attack
upon our branch of the Church a year or two ago,

rounded off one of his periods by a reference to
the “ Deans and Chapters ” which an Irish Bishop
possessed, to help him in the oversight of the 5,000
Protestant souls which, as he informed the House,
was the average number that an Irish diocese con-
tained ! The “ Deans and Chapters” were no exaggera-
tion. All our Bishops have “Deans some have three ;
Cashel and Killaloe have four ; nearly all have not
a Chapter only, but “ Chapters.” A plain Englishman,
however, well affected to us, will count that under
present circumstances we are carrying too much sail,
when he hears that, while in England 29 Deans of
Cathedrals or Collegiate churches suffice, our Esta-
blishment includes 32 Deans, an average of nearly
three to each Bishop, and 293 other dignities and pre-
bends. With Deans he instantly associates a Deanery,
a Cathedral, a Chapter, Minor Canons, Vicars- choral,
capitular estates, a considerable income, and whatever
of dignity and position the office carries with it in
England. You know, my reverend brethren, what
the realities are ; how the Cathedral has often been
for two centuries in ruins, how it is often the poor
parish church of some decayed hamlet, with no
single circumstance to distinguish it from any other
village church ; how merely titular, in many cases,
the dignity is.* Surely, the maintenance of such
titles as these in such needless profusion, is but as

* See note E (Appendix).

the spreading of an idle canvas for the adverse
winds to play in ; and we should do wisely and well
against the approach of the storm, cheerfully to
consent to see some of it taken in.

But it needs not for me to remind you how idle all
setting of our house in order will prove, if we do
but occupy ourselves with a putting to rights of
the things external of it. It is not the house empty,
even though it be swept and garnished, but the house
dwelt in by the presence and power of the Holy
Ghost, which we may hope to keep as an inviolate
fortress against those who would assail it. A rough
justice is ever finding place even in this present time,
and, for the most part, that which deserves to subsist
continues to subsist ; that which does not deserve to
subsist any longer, after a certain day of grace,
sooner or later (and who will not say the sooner the
better ?) is removed out of the way. Salt that
keeps its savour is not cast out, is not trodden under
foot of men ; but where a carcass is, — a Church, a
State, or any other Society, abandoned by its proper
spirit of life, — there the eagles, the ministers of doom,
are presently as by a sure instinct gathered together,
to rid the earth of that which is nothing now but an
offence. Who can wish it otherwise, or count it an
unrighteous decree, that only what is alive lives on,
that what is dead is somehow or other buried out of
sight? See we then to the spiritual life of our
Church, never forgetting (for this will bring the

matter home to each one of us) that the life of the
whole is only the aggregate life of the parts ; to our
own life therefore first, and then to the life of those
committed to our charge.

If the Protestants in our parish are few, they have
a right to claim that they shall be only the more
diligently watched and tended by us ; that they shall
have that special pastoral care bestowed upon them,
one by one, which in more populous parishes it
may be sometimes difficult to afford. Let there be
no room for any to ask of us — amusing ourselves at
a distance during the week, only appearing among
our people for a brief and hurried visit on the
Sunday — “ With whom hast thou left those few sheep
in the wilderness ?” The public preaching of the
Word, that most precious ordinance of God, is yet
no substitute for pastoral superintendence. However
zealously fulfilled, it can never make the visitation
of our people from house to house superfluous. I
urge this the more strongly, because there is always
a temptation to lay a stress on that portion of our
work, which may be pleasant not merely to the spirit,
but to the flesh ; and at the same time to find reasons
for a more slight performing of that which, with all
its rich rewards even now, has yet no little share
of painfulness, disappointment and toil. We, the
ministers of Christ’s Church in Ireland, ought never
to forget the special obligations which in this matter
are imposed upon us from the mere fact that in

many districts of the land our poorer Protestant
brethren are not merely in a minority, but in a very
small minority indeed. Peculiar dangers beset them
from this. Even if no very harsh pressure, nothing
which deserves the name of persecution, is brought to
bear upon them, still they cannot but feel every day
that life would be smoother, that the course of things
would run easier with them, if they went with the
multitude, and were altogether as their neighbours
were ; not to say that it requires no little strength of
mind and earnestness of conviction, still confidently
to hold fast and believe that which all around us are
denying, perhaps ridiculing to boot. What danger,
then, lest these, the scattered of our people, where they
have no very strong root in themselves, where their
faith may be as yet rather a tradition of men than a
living grasp of God’s truth, — lest, I say, these should
be seduced from their allegiance to it. How urgently
they need that moral and spiritual support which
we, their pastors, can better than any other give
them, which we are set to give them. What need have
they to be diligently looked after, and to know that
they are so ; that there are those who rejoice at their
stedfastness, who would mourn over their falling aAvay ;
what need that one by one they should be brought, if
they are not there already, into that inner sanctuary
of the faith, from whence it would be well nigh impos-
sible for any cunning craftiness of men to pluck them
away. Look to it, I beseech you, that these our

scattered ones, the hacntopa of our little Israel, do
not insensibly disappear, swallowed up and lost in
the larger mass around them, as, alas ! in some in-
stances they already have disappeared, through the
carelessness of those who should have watched, and
shall have to answer, for their souls.

And as part of such a watching I cannot but think
that we should be very plain with the young people
of our flocks, both in private ministrations and in
public, on the evil and sin of mixed marriages. I
speak not now of the unhappiness which even in the
present time they are almost sure to entail ; not
seldom a life-long misery ; when they who should he
heirs together of the grace of life, and have all things
in common, are separated from one another in the
highest matter of all, and have not that in common ;
when the children, who should have been the closest
bond between them, prove an element of discord and
division introduced into the very heart of the family.
But there are reasons more potent yet, why we should
deprecate these unions. Too often it happens that
the higher is drawn down into the region of the lower,
and the man or the woman, who, to gratify some pass-
ing fancy, or enticed by some worldly advantage,
has shewn in how little comparative esteem the
pure faith of the Gospel was to them, has ended,
by a just judgment of God, in forsaking it alto-
gether ; and even if this should not prove so, ex-
perience has abundantly shewn that, despite of any

stipulations to the contrary, the children of these
ill-omened marriages will in all likelihood be lost
to the Church. There is in this way a drain upon
our numbers which, if not great, is yet constantly
going forward, and which we are bound to arrest if we
can. Where such marriages have already found place
among your people, I can only urge watchfulness
upon you, that the Church may retain those who
rightfully are hers, and whom she can bless as no other
can. It would indeed be a shame and a reproach to
us, if we showed ourselves careless to lose them whom
others show themselves so earnest to win.

I have just now hinted at the temptation to indo-
lence which the fewness of our people may sometimes
and to some suggest. But if this to some, the same
fewness, as I well know, is to others a sore trial from
quite an opposite and a nobler side. I can well
understand how fretting a trial it must prove to be
conscious of energies which find almost no room for
their exercise, to be longing for work in the Master’s
cause which is not given, to see life passing away and
the opportunities of winning souls and of building up
Churches not afforded, or only in scantiest measure
afforded ; for one to be bidden to stand and wait,
who would fain be running and working for that dear
Lord who redeemed him. To such I would venture
a word, still keeping in view the means by which oux
Church may be strengthened the most. I have some-
times thought that this unwelcome and enforced

f 2

leisure might here and there, by those who were
duly equipped thereto, be turned to a golden account
in the production of some work which should be a
possession for eyer to the Church, a new bulwark
raised up against the encroachments of superstition
or infidelity. I know very well that this which
I suggest is not every man’s vocation ; but I also
know that nothing has so effectually wrought to
win for us the attention, the sympathy, the regard
of our English brethren, as those great books in
theology, which in these latter days our Church
has produced. Only let proceed from us a few
more such works as his — too early lost — the young
Marcellus, for so we might call him, of our Irish
Church, who showed so well what was the true
development of doctrine in the Church, when one
would have found in this development an argument
for every superaddition to the truth which Rome had
made or might make ; only let proceed from us a
few more to place on the same shelf with this, or with
that other, On the Nature and Effects of Faith ; or
with yet a third, On the Inspiration of Scripture , its
Nature and Proof ; and, not to speak of higher good
so done, we should secure for ourselves an amount of
respectful attention, of honourable sympathy, which
would be invaluable in every future hour of difficulty
and danger. I sometimes seem to see tokens among
us of a theology, whereof these, and other works most
worthy to be named, even though they may not

attain to these first three, shall be only the first-
fruits. Ask yourselves, my reverend brethren, above
all you who, in the midst of enforced leisure, are
yearning to do more for Him who has done all for
you, whether patient toil, and thought, and prayer,
with a longing desire to profit your brethren, and
to benefit the Church, and to bring glory to God,
might not enable you to accomplish something
here.

In the course of my Charge, which is now drawing
toward a close, I have spoken more than once of
dangers which are before us ; yet not, my reverend
brethren, as taking that desponding view of the
future of our Establishment, which some are dis-
posed to take ; who count that it has now little more
than to draw its robe about it, that so it may fall
with decency. I cannot, of course, shut my eyes to
the many dangers which surround it, the open enemies
who assail it from without, the weak and wavering
hearts of many of its professed defenders within ; not
to say that there are too many warnings in Scripture
against crying, “ Peace and Safety,” when, indeed,
there is no peace, and when safety is far otf, to allow
one to be very confident, while prophesying of these.
But with all this it seems to me that, amid much
apparent, and not a little real, weakness, we have
sources and secrets of strength which only the day
of trial will reveal.

The late abortive conspiracy, in its display of

material forces most ridiculous, but in its moral
aspects suggestive of very sad and serious thoughts,
has not been without its gains for us, little as
we could have desired to improve our position
by so dear an experience as this has been. No one
can henceforward affect to regard the chronic discon-
tent— disloyalty, I fear, we must call it — of certain
portions of our population as deriving its motive and
aliment from any grievance, real or imaginary, which
they feel by our Establishment to have been inflicted
upon them. We have been made partakers of the
inmost thoughts of these men ; their most secret
deliberations have been laid bare ; and the movement
presents itself as purely socialistic, in nothing re-
ligous, the question of our Establishment apparently
not so much as having once presented itself to their
minds. Of course with their success this, as every
other institution of the land, would have gone to the
ground ; and a war against rent would have been a
war against rent-charge as well ; but of hostility to
the Church of Ireland as such, there has not been the
slightest trace. And this can as little be affirmed
to exist among the great body of our Roman Catholic
fellow-countrymen ; so that one can only smile and
wonder when an English Peer rises in Parliament
and denounces the Church as a constant source of
irritation and anger to the Irish people, mentally
comparing this picture of his imagination with the
reality of things. Those among our English assailants

(and whatever energy there is in the assault on the
Irish Church is in England, and not here) are, at any
rate, more accurately informed, who upbraid the Irish
people with their patience and their apathy under
what they would fain persuade them is an ever-
present insult and wrong.

But why should they feel it such ? AVith what
object in view should they desire its overthrow ? In
temporal matters, there are no points of unfriendly
contact or collision between it and them. They
know it chiefly by the presence of one in their midst,
who, if nothing more to them , is a country gentle-
man, bound to almost constant residence among them;
often, indeed, with most moderate means, but dispens-
ing these on the spot ; bound by the very decencies
of his profession to dispense them with a certain regard
had to the needs and distresses of those around him ;
interested in all that promotes the well-being of
those, rich and poor, among whom his lot, probably
for life, is cast. In him they behold one on whom
they have a certain claim ; to whom, not indeed on
matters directly spiritual, but on all others they
freely resort, and this sometimes in preference to
any other, seeking from him that advice or that
assistance which they are sure that, to the best of
his ability, he will give. Whether it would be
possible, by artificial means, to arouse in this people
so well disposed to us now, feelings of ill will, I can-
not venture to say ; but the most timid politician

could not at the present draw an argument for the
abolition of the Establishment from the expediency
of removing a source of irritation to the numerical
majority of the people of this country. To a few
of the higher Roman Catholic ecclesiastics it may
probably be such, but to the mass of the population
nothing of the kind. There are questions on which
they feel deeply, which stir them in the very depths
of their souls, — that, for instance, of the tenure of
land ; but of such question this is not one, and I do
not fancy that it would be easy to make it one.

Then, again, our Church is strong, in the convic-
tion of all the wisest among English statesmen, that
in this ofttimes distracted land it is well there
should be at least a portion of the population, who,
short of that allegiance which they owe to Almighty
God, know of no other allegiance whatever, save that
which they owe to the Monarch on the throne ; whose
very existence, in any tolerable condition, is inextri-
cably bound up with the maintenance of the English
connexion, their dearest interests, no less than their
strongest affections, urging them to the drawing of
that connexion ever closer. Slowly, but surely, the
essentially anti-national character of Romanism, its
necessary antagonism to the State, oftentimes more
or less latent in Roman Catholic countries, but in
Protestant manifesting itself plainly, has forced itself*
upon their minds. They have fully understood that
this antagonism is not the accident of the system here

or there, but necessarily inherent to it, growing as it
does out of the fact that the Roman Catholic Church
finds for all its members a centre, out of and beyond
the nation ; in the midst of which nation, as an
empire within an empire, it exists. Many, too,
by the experience of the last forty years, have been
disabused of the expectation that, till all is conceded
to her, Rome will accept anything of place or pre-
eminence in the land, save as a vantage-ground
for more effectually demanding and obtaining some-
thing further.

Again, the Church is strong, (I am speaking
here but of the sources of earthly strength which it
possesses,) in the fact that the great English people,
despite of all disappointments of the past, are not
prepared finally and for ever to resign the hope that
the Reformation, source of such countless blessings
to England, shall yet be accepted by the whole Irish
people, and that through it they shall be partakers of
the same. And even if that grand hope is not to
find its fulfilment, they are resolved, I believe, so
far as in them lies, to do their part for the main-
taining in Ireland an abiding witness, although
it be that of a minority, to the truths which have
made England great and happy and free.

And then, once more and lastly, amid all its weak-
ness, the Church is strong in that, which even in a
world of violence and wrong often proves at last
the strongest of all. It is strong in its rights.

I speak not here of mere legal rights, of engage-
ments made to it at the Union and the like, all
which have more or less value, but of higher
rights than these, which are so bound up with the
duties of the State, — being, in fact, the correlatives
of those duties, — that the State must put itself in
contradiction with itself, must abandon its own
standing-ground, when it violates or ignores them.
When, indeed, we claim to be rightfully established
in the land on the ground that our Church is the
true one, adversaries are wont to retort that this is a
begging of the whole question at issue. But put the
assertion in another and correcter form, namely, that
we claim this on the ground that ours is the Church
which the State believes to be true , and there is no
room for any such retort. For, will any deny
the fact, that the State is committed to the faith
of the Reformation quite as unreservedly as the
Church ? Some may regret, others rejoice, that it
is so ; but the fact itself is not to be gainsaid or
denied. The State proclaims as much when it
requires that its supreme Head and Ruler shall
always be a Protestant ; when it withdraws from all
other but Protestants certain places of chief pre-
eminence in the realm ; when it gives to the office-
bearers of a Reformed Church, as such, seats in the
highest Council of the nation. In the Oath of Supre-
macy, in the Coronation Oath, in a thousand other
ways, that State of which we constitute a component

part, renounces a position of neutrality in matters of
religion ; avouches that it does believe one form of
Christian faith to be truer than another ; arid, counting
itself bound to act upon this conviction, has invited
the Church which embodies this, the truest form, to
closest alliance with itself, granting to it some privi-
leges, and receiving from it benefits infinitely greater
in return. We are the Established Church, because
we are the Church which the State believes to be
true, and because the State, having a conscience just
as really as an individual has a conscience, being
capable of right acting or of wrong, has considered
it a duty to associate with itself for objects which it
desires, but which are beyond its own reach, the
Church which holds the faith that it holds, and
which therefore it believes most capable of fulfilling
these its desires for the highest welfare of its
members.

But, my reverend brethren, whether this Establish-
ment of ours is to stand or to fall, for ourselves, as
ministers of a Church which Christ has founded on His
own word and promise, which Parliaments and people
cannot unmake, as they did not make, the course
before us is clear :• — to seek to approve ourselves not
altogether unworthy of those great hopes which are
placed in us by our fellow-churchmen in England, of
that high vocation as witnesses for His truth in this
land to which God has called us. In many things we
inherit the mournful results of the sins, shortcomings,

negligences, (and they were great,) of other genera-
tions ; as it is only too certain that those who come
after us will inherit the mournful result of ours.
Let us set ourselves manfully to repair and make
good those of the past, not to leave our own a load
to overwhelm them who shall succeed us. And
to these ends give we all diligence, first, to the
strengthening, deepening, purifying of the life of God
in our own souls, remembering always that only as we
ourselves, by the power of the Holy Ghost, rise to
higher things, to a closer knowledge of Christ, can
we hope to draw others with us, onward and upward,
nearer and closer to God ; and as little forgetting that
as we decline, our people will decline with us, and, ter-
rible thought ! if we perish, it is not given to us to
perish alone. Alive ourselves, we shall then be fitted
to quicken the life of others. He that has salt in
himself, the salt of God’s grace, he, and he only, can
hope to salt others ; as one said of old, “ He whose life
lightens, his words thunder” (Cujus vita fulgor, ejus
verba tonitrua). The future of that beloved Church
which we serve is with God, wrapt up in the secret
counsels of His will. But whatever day, my brethren,
may overtake us, who are now serving our brief service
within it, be it the day of our death, or the day of the
Lord Jesus, or some day before either of these, which
shall rudely withdraw from us such place and position
as we now enjoy (more it cannot take away), be sure of
this, that it will not come amiss, if only it find us in

our work, doing that work not deceitfully, but with
our might. And that it may so find us, let us pray
to Him who is the Giver of every good gift and
grace, that He would give to us an ever-increasing
sense of the shortness of time, of the value of souls,
of the excellency of Christ, of the dignity of our
office who have to proclaim this excellency to our
brethren ; that He would make us more to under-
stand its dignity at once and its danger ; the
dreadfulness of the doom of the unfaithful pastor ;
the greatness and the glory of his reward, to whom
the Chief Shepherd, merciful and gracious, shall
pronounce His great Well done ” in the day of His
appearing.

APPENDIX.

Note A, p. 33.

I append here an extract from a late “ Appeal from the
Lord Bishop of Tuam

“Palace, Tuam, January, 1865.

u The Bishop of Tuam would earnestly call the attention of all
who desire the welfare of the United Church of England and
Ireland, to the very great work of the Church Extension which has of
late years, through the blessing of God, taken place in the District
of West Connaught. This District comprises those portions of
the counties Galway and Mayo which more immediately border
upon the Atlantic. It is about 100 miles in length, and from 20
to 30 miles in breadth.

“Five-and-twenty years ago, the greatest number of congregations
in connection with our Church which could be found within that
District was thirteen. The number of churches in the District
was seven ; the number of clergymen eleven.

“ Within the same district there are now fifty-seven separate
congregations, thirty churches, and thirty-five clergymen.

“ There has, therefore, taken place within that district,

DURING AN INTERVAL OF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, A TOTAL INCREASE OF
FORTY-FOUR CONGREGATIONS, TWENTY-THREE CHURCHES, AND TWENTY-
FOUR CLERGYMEN.

“ The Church revenues of the District, which have always been
miserably disproportioned to the extent of the parishes from which
they are derived, have been subdivided to the uttermost, in the
hope of meeting the increased demand for pastoral supervision, but

in vain ; and the result is, that there are now in West Connaught
a large number of important districts, each requiring the care of a
separate clergyman, which are dependent for pastoral superin-
tendence solely upon the precarious supply of anual contributions.

“ In the year 1859, a society entitled the West Connaught
Church Endowment Society, was formed, under the patronage of
the late Lord Primate of All Ireland, the object of which was to
convert these new fields of labour into separate parochial districts
(or what in England are called ‘ new parishes’) and to provide each
district with such an endowment as might ensure to it the
premanent services of a resident minister.

“ The Bishop of Tuam is happy to say that, since the formation
of that Society, five of the most important districts of West
Connaught (Moyrus, Sellerna, Derrygimla, Castle-kerke, and
Ballycroy) have been provided though its means, with an

endowment of <£75 per annum each.

***** *

“ The Bishop of Tuam would now earnestly invite those members
of our Church, both in England and Ireland, who may not hitherto
have known of the existence of this Society, to assist it by their
sympathy, their prayers, and their alms.”

Note B, p. 46.

As this statement has already been called in question, and
is likely to be called in question again, I have no choice but
to support it by a few figures, drawn in every case from the
Reports or Returns of the Board. Whether the Non- Vested
Schools, as they now exist, were an afterthought (and cer-
tainly there seems no room for them in the terms of Lord
Stanley’s Letter) ; whether or no they were allowed as a
safety-valve to give room and expansion to energies and
convictions which would have totally refused to be shut up
within stricter limits, — of this there can be no question, that

they were an immense step toward the denominational
system. This will be sufficiently clear even to those not
familiar with our matters, from the following authoritative
description of them.

“ In schools not vested, and which receive no other aid
than salary and books, it is for the patrons or managers to
determine whether any, and, if any, what religious instruc-
tion shall be given in the school-room ; but if they do not
permit it to be given in the school-room, the children whose
parents or guardians so desire, must be allowed to absent
themselves from the school, at reasonable times, for the pur.
pose of receiving such instruction elsewhere.”

These schools now constitute the very large majority of
those in connexion with the Board, and, I believe, are ever
constituting a larger majority ; in December, 1863, the
Vested schools were 1,155, the Non-Vested, 4,5*24.

But it may be urged, that in more than half the schools con-
nected with the Board, and, therefore, in many Non-Vested
as well as Vested, united education is actually going for-
ward. The last Return of the Commissioners makes the
number to be 54-1 per cent. — not in itself a very encouraging
statement, but very much less so when analysed a little. “ One
swallow does not make a summer and as little does one
Protestant pupil in a school containing two or three hundred
Roman Catholic, constitute it a school where, with any jus-
tice, it can be affirmed that mixed education is going forward.

As the Board, in their Annual Report, while they return
the percentage of Schools “ exhibiting a mixed attendance
of Protestant and Roman Catholic pupils (namely, in their
last Return, 54T per cent.), give no table to show the pro-
portions in which they are mixed, we are obliged to recur to
a most important Return obtained by Mr. Butt in 1861, and
ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 13th
March, 1861, “ specifying the number of Schools in connexion
with the National Board of Education, in which Protestant

and Roman Catholic children were jointly receiving educa-
tion, and the number of Protestant and Roman Catholic
children in each such school respectively.” This Return
has the disadvantage of not bringing up the matter to the
latest date ; but if United Education has made progress since
that date, and later Returns would shew a more favourable
result, it will be easy to produce them. The number of
such schools in all Ireland were by this Return 2,898, the
Return referring to the year 1859 ; in which year there
were 5,496 schools, in all, in connexion with the Board.
These schools of mixed education numbered 295,250
children on the rolls ; but as the whole number of children
on the rolls in that year amounted to 806,510, it will
follow that 511,260 were to be found in schools where
united education was not going forward. But how were
these 295,250 distributed? In very many parts of Ulster,
so far as these schools reached, there undoubtedly was a fair
and real blending of the children of one denomination and
the other ; although certainly this has not been followed there
by any notable abatement of sectarian jealousies. And yet
by no means in all. In the county of Antrim there were
285 such schools; but if those were substracted in which one
Communion has it so entirely its own way, that only five, or
fewer than five, in many cases only one of the other Com-
munion attended, these schools of mixed education will at
once be reduced to 149, nearly one half. The same process
will reduce the 144 of the county Cavan to 71, more than one
half. But the results are far more remarkable when we
leave the Northern Province. Of course, we must not forget
how far more numerous are the Roman Catholics than the
members of our Communion in the three other Provinces, how
far more numerous, therefore, we may expect to find them
in the schools. Still, this fact is quite insufficient to explain
the remarkable phenomena which present themselves to us.
In the county of Louth 24 schools of mixed education are

returned; these, under the same process which I have just
described, will dwindle to four. Or take the county of
Tipperary; has the school at Tipperary itself, with one Pro-
testant and 256 Roman Catholics ; or that at Cashel, with
one Protestant and 392 Roman Catholics ; or in the county
of Waterford that at Tallow with, respectively, one and 200;
or that at Tramore with one and 458; or that at St. John’s
Square, county of Limerick, with one and 353 — any proper
right to swell these returns ? And these, let me observe, are
selected almost at random from innumerable others of like
character.

But most instructive of all will be a column taken in bulk
from the return of the county of Cork. I select this county
because it is one where our people are by no means few.
They were by the last Census 50,666, as compared with
494,146 Roman Catholics, or somewhat more than one to
10. It is as follows:—

NAME OF SCHOOL.

Number of j
Children on the
Rolls, for the
Quarter ending
31st Dec., 1859. i

NAME OF SCHOOL.

Number of
Children on the
Rolls, for the
Quarter ending
31st Dec., 1859.

Protestant,
of all
Denomina-
tions.

Roman

Catholics.

Protestant,
of all

Denomina-

tions.

Roman

Catholics.

Carried over...

5542

Glenville

61 1

Dromagh

Forside

Ditto

101

New Glanmire

Grange

103

Clonpriest

Cove of Kinsale ...

100

Whitegate

106 j

Glandore

Kilbarry

Baltimore

Killeagh

115 ;

Lysheen

158

Clonakilty

286

Killavillen

108

Macroom

Ditto

Midleton

761

Ballykerwick

Ahandur

115

Dunbeacon

113

Old Chapel

169

Glengariffe

White Church

Ballymakeera

159

Ditto

! i

Cloyne

206

Sundayswells

115

Sundayswell

215

Ballytibbet

150 !

Kilmacdonagh . . .

154

Kilbolane

]

75 i

Knocks Keagh ....

Glandore

118

Hawlboline Island

Charleville

217

Glenville

Midleton

321

Ballygraddy

114

County Gaol, No 1

Skibbereen

102

Cove

330

Inch

Mallow

235

Dungourney

149

Rathcormack

144

Laharn

Ballydahob

Dunmanway

Kanturk

249

Ballynora

232

Ballydahob

Castleview

112

Castlelyons

Cnox

115

Kilworth

136

Britway

110

Rathcormack

132

Cullen

170

Kilworth

120

Clonpriest

Paddock

Lemlara

Kanturk

274

Scart

Goggin’s Hill

160

Lowertown

116

Skull

101

Doneraile

414

Knockraha

Bally vonier

] 25

Over...

5542

Total..

210

9825

The result of all will be, that, while 141 schools of
mixed education are returned for this county as “ schools in
which Protestants and Roman Catholics were jointly receiv-
ing education,” if the schools in which one Protestant pupil
only was on the rolls were subtracted, there would remain
only 91 ; if, further, those in which only two, there would
remain but 56 ; if those in which only three, there would then
remain 33; and if those in which only four, the original
141 would have dwindled to 23. I sometimes cannot help
asking myself whether such schools ought to figure in the
Annual Reports of the Board among those “ exhibiting a
mixed attendance of Protestant and Roman Catholic children,”
with no explanation given of the extent to which they are
such.

Note C, p. 58.

I have not thought it necessary to withdraw this state-
ment, notwithstanding that in a Memorial addressed to the
Lord Primate by “ Clergy of the Diocese of Derry,” a copy
of which Memorial was also transmitted to myself and to the
public newspapers, the following passage occurs : —

“We distinctly deny that the liability- of this diocese at any
time reached this sum. Any comparison, therefore, between
the present charge and previous fees made on this estimate,
was erroneous and calculated to mislead your Grace. Of
this there is a striking example in the case mentioned by Dr.
Stephens, in his Analysis of the Rules and Orders, and
quoted by his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin in his late
Charge. It is there stated that the fees payable by the
parish of Carndonagh were £3 6s. 9d. In no parish in the
diocese did the visitation fees ever amount to so large a sum.
In that parish, including the fee to the diocesan school-
master, they only amounted to £1 3s. Id. The statement
with regard to all the other parishes is equally incorrect .”

I have not withdrawn this statement for these reasons : —
The Incumbent of Carndonagh, who is one of the memorial-
ists, was appointed to Carndonagh in 1851, in which year he
made a return to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of the
gross value of his living as being £435, and claimed , among
other deductions, £3 6s. 9d. for visitation fees, and 12s. for
the diocesan schoolmaster. In 1854 his valuation was ascer-
tained at £297 4s. 7fd., after deducting , among other
things, these visitation fees , viz. £3 6s. 9d. If they had not
been deducted, his income would have been ^300 11s. 4fd.
and he would consequently have been liable to an annual
tax of £7 10s. In 1855 his valuation was £298 17s. 2|d.,
and would have been £302 3s. lljd. and as such liable to
an annual tax of £7 10s. if he had not in writing claimed
£3 6s. 9d. to be deducted for visitation fees.

All these documents, and those also which bear out
the entire accuracy of the amount of visitation fees in
all the other cases instanced by Dr. Stephens from the
diocese of Derry, and quoted by me, but by the memorialists
proclaimed to be “ equally incorrect,” I have myself
examined and verified at the Office of the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners.

Note D, p. 60.

One example for many of the wonderful things which are
told about us may suffice. In Fraser's Magazine , October,
1865, p. 419, the following passage occurs: —

“For this fraction of a people, these 678,000 souls, no
less than 2,265 clergymen are maintained. There is a
clergyman for every 36 souls, and, in three dioceses, a
Bishop for every 1500.”

With the extraordinary statement of the second sentence,
it is hardly worth while to pause at the first, and to substitute

693,357 (the Census Return) for 678,000 as the number of
Church people, nor yet to observe that the total number of the
Clergy, as stated above, is only reached by including School-
masters, Fellows of Colleges, and gentlemen of estate in Holy
Orders. A withdrawal of these would reduce it to 2,172. But
this is a small matter. That which is indeed surprising is the
statement that there is a clergyman in Ireland for every 36
souls ; in other words, that about every eighteenth male Protes-
tant whom one meets is a clergyman. Suffering the author’s
own figures to stand, and dividing 678,000 by 2,265, the quo-
tient yielded is not 36, but 299 and a fraction, or more than
eight times more, while the corrected figures would give a quo-
tient not inconsiderably larger. But quite as surprising as this
is the assertion which follows, namely, that “ in three dioceses
there is a Bishop for every 1,500 souls,” although, to prevent
any possible misgiving on the mind of the reader, a reference
in proof of this assertion is made to the Census of 1861,
part 4, p. 20, s. 99. There is no diocese in Ireland .with
fewer Church people than 13,853, while two have more than
150,000. With such assertions as these passing current in
our popular literature, it will scarcely be superfluous to add
to this Appendix, which I do with the permission of the
compiler, a most useful and accurate Tabular Digest of
Irish Church Statistics , drawn from the latest authorities.

Note E, p. 62.

For others who may not know, I will briefly sum up the
actual facts of the case. Thirteen of the Cathedrals are
either parish churches which have been made Cathedrals
under stat. 39, George III., c. 19, or Cathedrals which were
made parish churches under stat. 21, George II., c. 8.
Thirteen of the Deans and Chapters are without any corpo-

rate revenues whatsoever. In 20 of the so-called Cathedrals
there is no foundation for the support of Vicars-choral tg
perform the Cathedral service. Twenty-four of the Deans
derive the whole of their incomes from the Benefices with
cure of souls, in which they officiate as parish ministers. And
of the Dignitaries and Prebendaries, 199 have no other
revenues than those belonging to the parishes of which
they are Incumbents. (See Second Report on Ecclesiastical
Revenue and Patronage , Ireland , 1834.)

TABULAE DIGEST

A ccording to the Parliamentary Returns moved for by Ca]

Number of
Churches in each

I. ARMAGH AND CLOGHER

*■

II. MEATH -

III. DERRY AND RAPHOE

IY. DOWN AND CONNOR, AND DROMORE

V. KILMORE, ELPHIN AND ARDAGH -

1 '

VI. TUAM, KILLALA AND ACHONRY -

| VII. DUBLIN AND GLANDELAGH, AND KILDARE

! VIII. OSSORY, FERNS AND LEIGHLIN

; IX. CASHEL AND EMLY, WATERFORD AND

LISMORE

i X. LIMERICK, ARDFERT AND AGHADOE

XI. CORK, CLOYNE AND ROSS -

XII. KILLALOE AND KILFENORA, CLONFERT AND )
KILMACDUAGH ]

Total number of Churches in Ireland

Total Church Population of Ireland

Total number of Livings in Ireland

Average number of Livings in each Bishoprick

Average Church Population of a Living in Ireland

Total number of Non-Resident Incumbents in Ireland

Total number of Curates in Ireland

Total number of Clergy in Ireland

Gross value of the Livings in Ireland -

Average gross value of a Living in Ireland

tSOH«OOW

TABULAR DIGEST OF IRISH CHURCH

According to the Parliamentary Returns moved for by Captain Stacpoole, and ordered by the House of}

By W. MAZIERE BRADY, D.D.

:stics,

be Printed, 4th May , 1864.

Number of
Churches in each
United Diocese.

| Church Population of

j each United Diocese.

Average Church Popula- 1
tion of Livings in each 1
United Diocese.

Number of Livings (or of [
Incumbents) in each
United Diocese.

Number of Non-Resident
Incumbents in each
United Diocese.

Number of Curates in
each United Diocese.

Total Number of Clergyj|
in each United

Gross Value of the Livings
in each United Diocese.

Net Value of the Livings
in each United Diocese.

Average Net Value of
Livings in each United
Diocese.

Gross Value of each
Bishoprick.

Net Value of oach
Bishoprick.

I. ARMAGH AND CLOGHER -

179

150778

886

170

245

67246

50275

j £

295

15758

00 1

03 1

II. MEATH ------

108

16289

155

105

132

30717

24504

233

4308

3664

III. DERRY AND RAPHOE -

113

65951

605

109

157

49248

36769

337

13628

5939

IV. DOWN AND CONNOR, AND DROMORE

159

153467

1058

145

201

40071

32616

224

4988

3524

V. KILMORE, ELPHIN AND ARDAGH -

136

53196

450

118

202

40656

29944

; 253

| 6851

5939 j

VI. TUAM, KILLALA AND ACHONRY -

17157

238

101

22488

17409

241

5265

4038 |

| VII. DUBLIN AND GLANDELAGH, AND KILDARE - ;

171

112766

683

165

253

43413

33568

203

8249

6569 j

VIII. OSSORY, FERNS AND LEIGHLIN

171

35663

208

171

254

57324

43851

256

4630

3867

IX. CASHEL AND EMLY, WATERFORD AND LISMORE

13853

129

107

152

37841

31009

289

5190

4402 |

| X. LIMERICK, ARDFERT AND AGHADOE

15103

162

126

27545

21676

233

4612

3961

i XI. CORK, CLOYNE AND ROSS - - - -

157

43228

254

170

241

62093

48799

287

2697

2304 |

XII. KILLALOE AND KILFENORA, CLONFERT AND )
KILMACDUAGH /

15906

187

6 23

108

24402

20154

237

3880

3261 j

Total number of Churches in Ireland

Total Church Population of Ireland

Total number of Livings in Ireland

Average number of Livings in each Bishoprick

Average Church Population of a Living in Ireland

Total number of Non-Resident Incumbents in Ireland

Total number of Curates in Ireland

Total number of Clergy in Ireland

Gross value of the Livings in Ireland -

Average gross vahie of a Living in Ireland

1534

- 693357

1510

125

459

205

662

2172

- £506368

335

Net value of Livings in Ireland 393833

Average net value of a Living in Ireland - - - - - - 260

Total gross value of Bishopricks in Ireland ------ 80059

Average gross value of a Bishoprick in Ireland - 6671

Total net value of Bishopricks in Ireland ------ 55110

Average net value of a Bishoprick in Ireland - - - - 4592

Aggregate amount of the gross Revenue of the Established Church, (including

Bishopricks and £1776 of Trustee Chapels, and £1433 of Ministers’ Money) - 586428
Aggregate amount of the net Revenue of the Established Church, (including

Bishopricks and £1741 of Trustee Chapels, and £1433 of Ministers’ Money) - 448943

DELIVERED TO TIIE

CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S,

at Si's Nintf) Fisitation,

OCTOBER, 1866.

CONNOP THIRLWALL, D.D.

bishop oe st. david’s.

PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CLERGY.

Honiton,

RIVING TONS, WATERLOO PLACE ;

HIGH STREET,
©ifotlr.

trinity street,
©amfcr&ge.

1866.

CHARGE,

SfC.

My Reverend Brethren,

On this occasion of my ninth Visitation my
thoughts are almost necessarily carried back to the
beginning of the period, now more than a quarter of
a century, during which I have been permitted to
fill this chair, and to the view which I then took of
the state of things around me, and the feelings with
which I looked forward to the future which now lies
behind us. In this retrospect I find one ground of
satisfaction, on which I may dwell without the
slightest temptation to self-complacency. Though
I am sure that the estimate I then formed, and
which I indicated in my first Charge, of the difficul-
ties which beset the Church’s work in the Diocese,
was not at all exaggerated, it was certainly far from
cheering ; and the very moderate expectations which
it seemed to warrant, were hardly liable to much
disappointment. Much brighter hopes might, as the
event has shown, have been safely indulged by one
of more sanguine temperament or larger foresight.
I was able, indeed, to point to many gladdening
signs of growing vigour and expansive energy in the
Church at large ; but I could not discover any clear

a 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

evidence that this spirit had penetrated into our
corner of the field, or any sure ground of confidence
as to the degree in which it would overcome the
manifold obstacles it had to encounter there. I
should be still more loth to fall under any illusion
of an opposite kind, however agreeable ; but I do
find much cause for thankfulness when I compare
the present state of the Diocese, in many important
aspects, with my recollections of the past. I need
not scruple to express this feeling, whether the pro-
gress which has been made be great or small, be-
cause in the efforts by which it has been brought
about, I can claim no share but that of a sympa-
thizing and encouraging spectator. It is, under
Providence, to the clergy and the faithful laity,
though not without large help from without, that
the whole is due.

I look in the first place to the condition of our
sacred buildings, as the most important of all out-
ward aids to religion, and the surest sign of the
interest it excites. The records of the Church
Building Society furnish a measure of the activity
with which the work of church restoration has been
carried on among us within the last half century.
Between 1818 and 1865 it has made grants to this
Diocese in 183 cases. Of this number two-thirds
belong to the latter half of the period. This list,
indeed, is far from representing all that has been
done in our time. It omits many of the under-
takings which have been accomplished by private,
unaided, unostentatious munificence, to which we
owe some of the goodliest of our churches, among
them seven due to the munificence of the late and
the present Earl Cawdor. And, I may add, that
there are at this moment more than thirty parishes

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

in which new or restored churches are in various
stages of progress, from the first step, to immediate
readiness for consecration or re-opening. I do not
expect to see all of them completed. They must
more or less interfere with one another. But this
simultaneous movement in all quarters of the Dio-
cese is a gratifying sign of healthy life h I may
also observe, that this increase in the number of our
churches has been accompanied by a great improve-
ment in their architectural character. The contrast
between the earlier and the later buildings in their
style, would in general be sufficient to mark the date
to which they belong. This indeed is a benefit
which, in common with the whole Church, we derive
from the awakening of a better feeling, and the
diffusion of more accurate knowledge and more en-
lightened taste in these matters. And much as we
have reason to congratulate ourselves on this happy
change with regard to our new churches, it is still
more important with regard to some of those which
had fallen into decay. A new church in the style which
would have satisfied those who saw it fifty years ago,
would now offend all who try it by a higher and more
correct standard. But this evil is very slight, when
compared with that which we have to deplore, when
a venerable monument is irreparably defaced by a mis-
named restoration. It must therefore be deemed a
happy coincidence, that in the case of some of the
most precious remains of ecclesiastical architecture
which have been handed down to us, the work has
been reserved for our day, and for skilful and tender
hands, by which they will be not only preserved from
further decay, but renewed in their original fresh-
ness.

1 See Appendix A.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

Among these our Cathedral unquestionably occu-
pies the foremost place, as well for its historical
associations, as for its architectural beauties, still
surviving all the injury it has undergone through the
violence and neglect of ages. I cannot lament that
the imminent and growing danger of total ruin with
which it was threatened, rendered it absolutely
necessary to devote a large sum to the single purpose
of warding off that disaster, without any change in
the outward appearance of the building. For it
followed, almost of course, that this occasion should
not be allowed to pass by, without an effort, both to
preserve whatever else was ready to perish, and to
restore the mutilated features of the original design.
I was aware, indeed, in common with all who engaged
in this undertaking, that the peculiar disadvantages
with which it had to contend in the raising of the
requisite funds, precluded all hope that it would be
brought to an early completion. The obscurity of
its position — known by actual inspection only to a
few occasional visitors, while out of Wales its very
existence, as any thing more than a mere ruin, is by
no means generally received as an unquestionable
fact — not only debars it from the sympathy which it
seldom fails to excite in those who see it, but
with some passes for an argument against the
undertaking itself. We have, therefore, cause to
be thankful, that, by an extraordinary exertion of
mechanical skill and ingenuity, which has reflected
some additional lustre on the name of Mr. Gilbert
Scott, the most important and difficult part of the
work, that by which the stability of the fabric was
to be secured, has been achieved.

Still, after every allowance for unfavourable cir-
cumstances, I must own that I have been somewhat

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

surprised and disappointed by the tardiness of the
response which has been made to the appeal of the
Dean and Chapter. I had hoped — not I think un-
reasonably— that the object would have roused a
more general and lively interest throughout the
Principality, as well as among lovers of art and
students of archaeology elsewhere. At a time when
archaeology is so zealously cultivated — in Wales by
a special Association — it might have been fairly ex-
pected that, even if the Cathedral had no claim on
the public but as an ancient monument, this would
have sufficed to secure a much larger amount of
support to the undertaking. On Churchmen it has
the further claim of being at once the Cathedral
of the Diocese, and the only church of the large
parish in which it stands. I have therefore been
grieved to hear murmurs, calling in question the
usefulness of the undertaking ; suggesting a doubt,
whether it would not have been better to let the
building sink into utter ruin, and to make some less
costly provision for the spiritual wants of the con-
gregation. I cannot deny that there is a dispro-
portion between the scale of the building, and
the want which it actually supplies. It is a dis-
proportion of superfluity, not of deficiency, and
may, it is to be hoped, hereafter become less sensi-
ble, while the room remains the same. But is any
one prepared, either in theory or in practice, to
accept the principle, of exactly adapting the pro-
vision for the worship of God to the need of the
worshippers, and to condemn all further outlay as
waste ? I will not ask whether the earliest example
of such parsimony among Christ’s disciples is one
which we should wish to follow. But if the prin-
ciple was consistently applied, how many of us must

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

stand convicted of waste, like that which excited the
indignation of Judas ? How many costly churches
have we built, when four walls, roofed over, with a
few holes to let in the light, would have served the
purpose of public worship ? Even if, in ordinary
cases, we had acted on such a principle, there would
have been one which would have had a right to be
treated as an exception — the Cathedral of the
Diocese. Surely this ought not to be the exception,
where the cheerful sacrifice of worldly things for
God’s honour is the rule. I rejoice that it is no
longer a question, whether we shall abandon or
preserve a sacred and precious deposit, bequeathed
to us by the pious munificence of former ages, and
that I may before long be permitted to see the work
carried to within a few stages of its final completion.
For this happy change in its prospects we are
indebted to the arrangement into which the Dean
and Chapter have just entered with the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners. I must, however, observe, that
their grant, together with the fund previously raised,
will not cover more than about two-thirds of the
estimated cost, and that it will still be to private
liberality that we must look for the remainder. Let
me add that, even if we should descend to lower
ground than I think we are at liberty to take, I
am persuaded that the outlay is likely to yield a
large return, in the impulse which this great work
may be expected to give to the progress of church
restoration throughout the Diocese.

To return for a few moments to the general sub-
ject. By far the larger part of the funds with which
the work of church building has been carried on in
the Diocese within my own experience, has been
supplied by voluntary contributions. In one point

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

of view tins is a cheering fact, as it shows that the
movement has not been checked by the difficulty
which besets the collecting of Church Rates, and
therefore is likely to advance, even if they should be
entirely abolished. But I am far from thinking that
therefore we can be indifferent to the state of the
law on the subject, either as regards others or our-
selves. It is true that, even where the rate appears
to be hopelessly lost, active exertions on the part of
the clergyman have almost invariably succeeded in
accomplishing the restoration of his church. But in
many of these cases a light rate, made in time, would
have prevented the building from falling to decay,
and have spared the congregation the inconvenience
of assembling in it, while in a condition painful to
devout feeling, if not perilous to health, or of trans-
ferring their attendance to some private room, of
scanty dimensions, rudely fitted up for the temporary
purpose. No doubt the privation often purchases a
much greater benefit : the exchange of a very un-
sightly building for a new one of more becoming
character. But frequently the only difference is,
that what has been done at last with great difficulty,
cost, and inconvenience, would have been done
earlier, more easily, and cheaply.

The Church Bate question has been left on its old
footing. The clergy were almost universally op-
posed to the measure by which an attempt was made
in the last Session of Parliament to provide a sub-
stitute for the compulsory Bate. It appeared, I
believe, to most of them, that, if they were to be
thrown entirely on the voluntary principle, they
might as well, if not much better, act upon their
own judgment as to the mode in which they availed
themselves of it, without any legislative regulations,

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

which might as often fetter and weaken, as promote
its operation. The loss to the Church was clear and
certain : the gain confined to one class of society,
which has no more right to it than any other. And
if there were any who had ever imagined that the
loss would be compensated by the removal of a con-
stant cause of strife and bitterness, these had been
long undeceived by the candid avowal of the Libera-
tion Society, that they set no value .on the abolition,
except as a step which would give them vantage
ground or leverage for further assaults on the Esta-
blished Church. The general object of the Bill was
one which most Churchmen would have agreed in
regarding as highly desirable. They were quite
willing that Nonconformists should be exempted
from the Rate. It was by the Dissenters themselves
that Mr. Hubbard’s Bill, brought in for that purpose,
was rejected, on the singular ground, — which throws
a very instructive light on the character of their
conscientious scruples, — that they did not like to be
ticketed , or recognized as Dissenters, though on
other occasions they glory in the profession of their
principles, and of their hostility to the Established
Church. It almost looked as if they did not like to
part with a grievance which they had found to be
not only harmless, but useful. The Government
Bill of last Session met this objection, so as to
satisfy the representatives of the Dissenting body,
who required nothing more than the abolition of the
compulsory Rate. But as the compulsion of which
they complained was that which was exercised on
themselves, while Churchmen, as far as they them-
selves were concerned, did not object to it, but
desired its continuance, it would have seemed enough
if those who complained of it had been relieved

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 11

from it, all things in other respects remaining as
they were.

But the Bill went much further than this. It
swept away the whole system, both with regard to
Dissenters and to Churchmen, and only permitted
voluntary contributions to be levied in the form of a
Bate, but without any power of enforcing payment.
It might be open to question, whether such a power
should exist : but the right of entering into a volun-
tary engagement, with the liberty of eluding it, could
hardly be considered as a very valuable boon by
those for whose benefit it was designed.

I will take this occasion to remark, that a wish
has been expressed in some quarters for the esta-
blishment of a Diocesan Church Building Society.
There are, no doubt, Dioceses in which this institu-
tion has produced very beneficial results. My only
objection to trying the experiment in ours, is my
fear, that the only certain appreciable effect would
be to add to the burdens of the clergy. It can
hardly be expected that the laity would take even
so lively an interest in the promotion of church
building as in the diffusion of education; and the
state of the funds which they contribute to that
object does not encourage reliance on their aid
toward one in which they would not feel themselves
so nearly concerned. Still, if it should appear that
the clergy are generally desirous of making such an
effort, I should be quite ready to comply with their
wishes, and to second it to the best of my ability.

Before I pass to a different subject, I must say a
word on another point of purely Diocesan interest.
The Augmentation Fund, which I founded in 1851,
has now yielded 24,000Z., of which very nearly

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

17,000?. has been already expended, almost entirely
in the building of parsonage houses. As no part of
this sum has been granted unconditionally, and the
larger part has been met with grants of equal
amount by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, it may
be considered as representing a sum exceeding
30,000?. already applied to this object, which, when
the remainder of the 24,000 ?. shall have been dis-
pensed in like manner, will be increased to upwards
of 40,000?. The number of the livings which have
hitherto shared the benefit of the Fund is thirty-four.
I still intend to apply the remainder now at my dis-
posal and whatever may hereafter accrue to the
Fund, in the same way. But though it will be
equally beneficial to the livings augmented, I am
sorry to have to inform you that it will not be so to
the present incumbents who receive the benefaction ;
for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have found
themselves compelled, in order to provide for the
still more important object of putting an end to the
renewal of leases on payment of fines, to substitute
permanent annuities for capital sums ; and the only
way in which their grants can be made available for
the purpose of building is by loan from Queen Anne’s
Bounty, entailing a charge of interest on the living.
Future applicants must bear this in mind. I hope
indeed, though with no great confidence, that means
may be found to enable the Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners to revert to their original practice. But
I must also express an earnest wish that they would
modify their requirements as to the scale of building,
which is too often in excess, not only of the wants,
but of the means of the clergy in this Diocese, and
would, if it had been lower, have rendered my Fund

or THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 13

somewhat less inadequate to the object ; and there
are still more than two hundred benefices destitute
of glebe houses.

I am sure that I shall be borne out by the expe-
rience and observation of my reverend brethren in
this and in every Archdeaconry of the Diocese, when
I say that the progress made in the work of popular
education has been not less steady than that of
church building and church restoration during the
same period. Many of you can witness to that which
is mainly your own work, — the fruit of heavy pecu-
niary sacrifices, as well as of much labour and
anxiety, — the founding of new schools, the erection
of new school-buildings, or the adaptation of the old
to the requirements of a higher standard. I may
also point to the foundation of our Training College,
as having marked a great epoch in the history of
education in the Diocese, and as the origin of an
impulse which has never slackened, but has been
strengthened by the institution of our Archidiaconal
Boards, which has, I hope, ensured its permanently
progressive action. But we must not disguise
from ourselves, that this progress is apparent only
in places which may be considered as centres of a
more or less considerable population. The Returns
which I have received from you continue to exhibit a
sad blank with regard to day schools in the more
thinly inhabited rural districts. I find no less than
120 parishes in which it does not appear that any
provision has yet been made, through the instru-
mentality of the Church, for the education of the
poor. I cannot, of course, undertake to pronounce
with regard to all these cases, that more might not
have been done to cover this grievous blot. But
knowing what I do of the general character of these

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

rural districts, on tlie one hand, and, on the other
hand, of the difficulties which beset the founding
and support of schools, even in more favoured neigh-
bourhoods, I may venture to say that the fact of the
absence of a day school is by no means in itself con-
clusive proof of culpable remissness, indifference, or
want of energy in the clergyman, and also to express
my conviction that, under the present system, and
without more effectual public aid, there is no prospect
that this state of things will ever be materially
amended.

Sharing, as we have done, in the benefits derived
from the distribution of the Parliamentary Grant for
Education, we have also suffered, in common with
others, from the changes which have taken place in
the principles or maxims on which it has been
administered, and which, however reasonable they
may have been in themselves, have certainly been
far from purely beneficial in their consequences. We
have no right indeed to complain, because the dis-
pensation of the grant is regulated by a more rigid
economy than when it was comparatively small.
The more firmly we are convinced that there is no
worthier object to which the wealth of the country
can be applied than the intellectual and moral train-
ing of the great mass of the people, the more we
must desire that no part of the funds destined to
this purpose should be wasted, and that, if there had
been any superfluous, though it may be not abso-
lutely useless expenditure, this should be retrenched,
and the saving reserved for the supply of real needs.
Such retrenchment was one object of the Revised
Code. But it is much to be feared that it has been
carried too near to the quick, has increased the diffi-
culties of the promoters of schools, and has tended

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

to discourage all who have engaged or were ready to
engage in the work of education. Such a result,
though no doubt wholly undesigned and unforeseen,
must be deeply deplored by all who believe that the
present system, in which private undertakings are
seconded by the State, and animated by the prospect
of that assistance, is on the whole best suited to
the circumstances of our mixed society; because in
the same degree in which it impairs the efficacy
and shakes the credit of that system, it favours
the views of those who wish to see that system
superseded by one more comprehensive and more
nearly adequate to the wants of the nation : though
with the inevitable, at least partial, sacrifice of much
which the promoters of schools mostly consider as of
supreme importance. It cannot be denied that the
present system needs, not contraction, but expansion;
that it does not reach all for whom it was designed ;
that this country is still, with regard to the diffusion
of elementary education, in a position of humiliating
inferiority to other States, to which it is far superior
in wealth. The Revised Code has certainly gained
no step in this direction. It has not only been
attended with serious losses to the managers of
schools through causes beyond their control, for
which, therefore, they could not justly be made
answerable; but it has driven some, and those among
the ablest teachers, from their profession into other
walks of life, and it has so reduced the average
amount of reward for their services, and rendered it
so precarious and uncertain, as to lower the value
and credit of the profession, and to deter the rising
generation from entering it. We have thus the pros-
pect that many schools depending on the Parliamen-
tary Grant will be closed, and that in those which are

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

able to maintain a struggling existence, at the cost
of hard sacrifices and painful anxiety to their mana-
gers, the work will be continually passing into less
and less competent hands 2. Thus one of the most
precious fruits of the old system — the training a
great body of well-educated teachers — will have been
lost. And I cannot help thinking that this unhappy
result is due, not only to an excessive and misdirected
parsimony, but in part to a mistake, which can never
be quite harmless, and may become a serious evil —
I mean the committing the administration of a system
to persons who are notoriously and avowedly hostile
to it, as was very conspicuously the case with one at
least who for five years held a high office in the
Committee of Council on Education 3. To the same
cause may be still more distinctly traced the offensive
and no less absurd and unjust imputation on school
managers, with which the Revised Code was intro-
duced. Men who had made the greatest personal
sacrifices for the promotion of education, found
themselves charged with selfish motives, because
they opposed a change, which in their view threat-
ened the very existence of their schools, and which
has been attended with effects which few who do not
desire the abolition of the Denominational System,
can view without sorrow and uneasiness.

2 See an article on the Revised Code in the Fortnightly Review,
May 15, 1866, p. 75. The last Report of the Committee of
Council on Education states (p. xiii.) : “ The introduction of the
Revised Code has been followed by a great diminution in the
number of pupil-teachers, especially of male pupil-teachers ; the
total number of pupil-teachers in 1862 (December 31) was 15,752,
against 11,221 in 1865, showing a diminution of 28.7 per cent.”

3 See the evidence of Mr. Lowe before the Select Committee on
Education, pp. 38, 39, and Professor Plumptre on the Conscience
Clause, in the Contemporary Review, April, 1866, p. 5S0.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 17

It was to be expected that the Training Colleges
should feel the effects of the revised system, and
that to many of them it should have proved fatal,
while as to the remainder, it is impossible to foresee
how long they may survive. Our own has hitherto
endured the crisis, but has not passed through
it. Perhaps we have more reason to be surprised
that any of them should have been allowed to subsist.
I always indeed thought that there was an enormous
and almost absurd disproportion between the variety
and difficulty of the branches of knowledge cultivated
in these establishments, and the extent of proficiency
required, on the one hand ; and, on the other hand,
the character of the schools and the capacity of the
scholars for whose instruction this multifarious and
profound learning was supposed to be acquired.
While complaints were heard on every side of the
early age at which most of the children were taken
away from school, and which rendered it almost
hopeless that they should retain even the first rudi-
ments of knowledge, the training of their teachers
was carried nearer and nearer to a point not far
below the average conditions of a University degree.
Still, under the previous system there were oppor-
tunities, though comparatively rare, of imparting
this knowledge to some of the elder scholars. It
was found, indeed, in many cases, that an undue
share of the master’s time and attention was bestowed
on the favoured few, while the many were abandoned
to the care of his young assistants, without any
effectual security for their instruction in the first
rudiments of the most necessary knowledge. That
was the ground alleged, I cannot help suspecting
with some exaggeration, for the revolution effected

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

by the Revised Code. But now that all motive
supplied by the dispensation of the Parliamentary
grant for any instruction beyond the arts of reading
and writing and a few rules of arithmetic has been
withdrawn4, it seems clear that such elaborate culture
of minds to be employed in this very simple task, is
altogether superfluous and out of place. The Train-
ing Colleges do not really belong to the system of
the Revised Code, and if it was to be considered as
the final phase in the history of the subject, might
almost as well cease to exist.

But it appears to me that such a state of things
would be a very lamentable and humiliating issue of
all the thought and work that have been spent on
the subject. I think there ought to be, in schools
for the labouring classes, a large demand for that
higher training which the Normal Colleges were
intended to give, though perhaps with some modifi-
cations, calculated to increase their practical useful-
ness. To the principle, indeed, on which the Revised
Code was based, we cannot but give a most hearty
assent. No one can deny the right and duty of the
State to demand results, where they may be obtained,
as the only sure test of real and honest service, and
the indispensable condition of remuneration granted
out of a public fund. Nor can it be doubted that
the elementary knowledge required by the present

4 “The Revised Code has tended, at least temporarily, to dis-
courage attention to the higher branches of elementary instruction
— geography, grammar, and history.” (Report u. s.) This is
the concurrent testimony of thirteen School Inspectors. On the
authority of three others it is added : “ There are however signs of
recovery ; and those schools do best in the elementary subjects
where the higher are not neglected.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

regulations is equally needful and profitable for all,
and for a very large, perhaps the largest part, of the
labouring class, both sufficient for their wants, and
as much as, under the narrow limitation of their
school years, they are capable of receiving. But
there remain in the upper and more important divi-
sion of the labouring class, a very great number
whose existence is ignored in the Revised Code, which
makes no provision for their wants, but leaves and
almost forces them to seek the education which they
need to fit them for their probable future occupations,
from private adventurers, utterly destitute of all real
qualifications for the duty they undertake, and who
look to it only as a gainful speculation by which
they exchange empty professions for solid if not
perfectly clean lucre. The question has been asked,
“ Do our National Schools provide education for all
whom they ought to train 5 ?” and it has been proved
beyond a doubt, both that they do not make such
provision, and that the tendency of the Revised Code
is to prevent them from so doing. The National
Society has shown itself awake to the importance of
the question, and has announced its intention of
taking steps with a view to the supply of this great
deficiency. I can only commend the subject to the
attention of those of my reverend brethren whose
position may afford them the opportunity of practi-
cally dealing with it. On the whole, I can only
consider both systems, the present and the past, as
experiments, each of which has been but partially
successful, though neither has entirely failed. It
is to be hoped that the experience which has
been gained through both, at no light cost, both to

6 By the Rev. Robert Gregory, in a pamphlet with this title,
addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

B 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

individuals and to the public, may serve to prepare
the way for a happier state of things.

In the meanwhile, the attention of the Church has
been much occupied by another question connected
with this subject, which has been discussed with
great warmth, and has caused an interruption in the
relations which had for many years happily subsisted
between the National Society and the Committee of
Council on Education. It is most earnestly to be
desired that those friendly relations and that har-
monious co-operation should be restored, and I ob-
serve signs which lead me to hope that this event is
not very far distant, and that a change has already
taken place in many minds favourable to the pro-
spect of a better understanding between the parties.
You will readily perceive that I am speaking of the
Conscience Clause, which the Committee of Council
have felt it their duty in certain cases to require to
be inserted in the trust deeds of Church schools, as
the condition of aid from the Parliamentary grant.
I feel it incumbent on me to say a few words in
explanation of my present views of the subject, be-
cause they may appear not quite in accordance with
those which I expressed, not indeed on this precise
question, but on one connected with it, some years
ago. It may be in your recollection that I had then
occasion to contend against a proposal which had been
made to supersede Church schools in Wales by others
on the model of the British and Foreign Schools. I
opposed this innovation, as proceeding on a partial
and erroneous view of the facts of the case, as need-
less for its avowed purpose, and as tending to sub-
stitute a worse for a better kind of school.
That opinion I retain entirely unaltered, or rather
strengthened by subsequent inquiry. But it might

OP THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 21

seem as if in that controversy I was taking common
ground with those who resisted the imposition of a
Conscience Clause. The agreement, however, was
merely apparent and accidental. My own opportu-
nities of observation led me to believe that the clause
was unnecessary, and ought not to be imposed until
its necessity was proved. It also appeared question-
able whether the Committee of Council were not
exceeding the limits of their lawful authority, when
they introduced such an innovation without the ex-
press sanction of Parliament. This last objection
has been continually urged by the opponents of the
Clause, though it is evidently quite foreign to the
merits of the Clause itself. But it seems now very
doubtful whether this is an argument which can be
used without taking an ungenerous advantage of a
forbearance for which the Church has cause to be
thankful. It is now certain that the motive which
withheld the Committee of Council from applying
to Parliament for its express approval of the Con-
science Clause, was the very reverse of an apprehen-
sion lest it should not obtain the assent of the House
of Commons. It was a fear lest they should be
thought not to have gone far enough and should
be forced to take steps which would drive many of
the clergy to forego all benefit from the Parlia-
mentary grant 6. This, however, as I have said, is a
formal and technical rather than a substantial and
practical objection. It may not be an unfit argu-
ment for a political debate, but it is not one which
much concerns or raises a scruple in the minds of
the clergy or the managers of Church schools. If

6 See the evidence of Earl Granville before the Select Committee
on Education, p. 109.

A CHAEGE TO THE CLEEGY

they decline to accept a grant on the condition of a
Conscience Clause it is because they dislike the
clause in itself, on grounds which would be just as
strong if it had been imposed by the Legislature.
It has indeed been so vehemently denounced by
persons who exercise no inconsiderable influence on
public opinion in Church questions, that it is not
easy for it to gain a calm and fair hearing. It
requires a certain amount of moral courage in a
clergyman, whatever may be his private opinion, to
take a step which he has been told by persons whom
he highly respects is inconsistent with his duty to
the Church, and tends to the most dangerous conse-
quences ; above all, when he finds this proposition
affirmed by a vote of the Lower House of Convoca-
tion.

I venture to say with the deepest conviction, that
never has the truth on any subject been more ob-
scured by passionate declamation, sophistical reason-
ing, high-sounding but utterly hollow phrases, and
by violent distortion of notorious facts, than on this :
all, no doubt, completely unintentional on the part
of the excellent persons who were betrayed into
these errors, who were the first dupes of their own
fallacies, and are perhaps of all men living the least
capable of anything bordering on disingenuous arti-
fice or wilful misrepresentation. It was the natural
effect of the panic into which they were thrown by
the suggestion of a danger threatening interests
most justly dear and sacred to them, which pre-
vented them from exercising a right judgment on
this question, or seeing any object connected with it
in its true light. But this deep earnestness, while it
does honour to their feelings, renders their aberra-
tions the more deplorable and mischievous. - I have

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

good hope, however, that the mist which they have
raised is beginning to break and clear away. I am
glad to see that the weakness of their “ reasons/’
and the groundlessness of their position, has been
exposed, both in and outside of Convocation, by
clergymen at least their equals in ability and attach-
ment to the Church, though lower in official station 7 .
I feel too much confidence in the moderation and
practical good sense of the great body of the clergy,
to believe that they will be long misled by any
authority which will not bear the test of sober judg-
ment, and I am sure that they will sooner or later be
found on the side of truth and justice.

The general ground of the opposition which has
been made to the Conscience Clause cannot be more
strongly expressed than when it is said to 4 4 under-
mine the foundation of religion.” But if there is any
force at all in the arguments which have been
brought against it, the expression is not too strong,
for in whatever terms they may have been couched
this is what they really amount to and imply, though
the vagueness of the phrase is better fitted to excite
a blind bewildering alarm than to raise any clear
and definite issue. In fact, until it has been ex-
plained and limited it can only act upon the feelings

7 Though the argumentative force of Archdeacon Denison’s
“ Seventeen Reasons ” has evaporated under Mr. Oakley’s analysis
(“ The Conscience Clause, a Reply to Archdeacon Denison, by
John Oakley, M.A.”) they will always retain a certain value, as
examples of a great variety of fallacies, which once actually de-
. ceived well-educated men. Perhaps I might have been content
with referring to Professor Plumptre’s very able article on the
subject in the Contemporary Review, if readers were more in the
habit of consulting books to which they are referred. But I
strongly recommend it to the perusal of every one who takes an
interest in the question.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

and the imagination, and presents no hold for any
rational opinion. But when it is translated into
plainer language, it appears that the mode in which
the foundation of religion is thought to be under-
mined by the Conscience Clause, consists in the
interference which through it the State is alleged
to exercise in the religious teaching of Church
schools. This is an allegation which we can im-
mediately compare with the Clause itself, so as to
ascertain in what sense it is to be understood, and
how far it is warranted by the meaning of the
Clause.

Here, however, I must remark a peculiar and very
significant feature in this controversy : that, though
it relates to a practical subject, those who describe
the Clause as fraught with such dreadful consequences,
have never appealed to experience, but rely entirely
on their own sagacity for discerning the effects of a
contingency which it is their object to avert 8. And
they do so, not because the question is beyond the
range of experience, and confined to the region of
theological speculation. There is experience to con-
sult, and such as would, I believe, in most cases be
considered a sufficient guide. In the present case it
has been rejected or ignored by those who condemn
the Clause, but only for a reason which does not in
the least lessen its intrinsic value, namely, that so far
as it goes, it happens to run counter to their views.
The Conscience Clause is not an experiment which has
yet to be made : it has been already tried in a great
number of schools. First, in all those in which the

8 Evidence of Archdeacon Denison before the Select Committee
on Education. 3727 : “ It is then an opinion unsupported by any
actual experience ? — Yes, I cannot say that I have had any actual
experience of the adoption of the Clause.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

principle was voluntarily adopted by the managers of
Church schools. I have yet to learn that this has
ever been attended with the slightest perceptible ill-
effect. It may however be said, that this is imma-
terial, and that the relaxation of the principle — the
right and duty of the Church to inculcate every
article of her doctrine on all children who are ad-
mitted into her schools — is, independently of conse-
quences, the worst of evils, a virtual “ undermining of
the foundation of religion.’ ’ I do not expect that
the excellent persons who hold this opinion, would
ever consent to submit it to the test of experience.
It is for them one of those transcendental verities,
belonging to a higher sphere, which are degraded
and profaned when they are brought down to earth,
and tried by their application to the actual condition
of things, and the real affairs of human life. I am
quite content that they should be spared such con-
tact with the world of reality. All that I wish is,
that the world of reality should not be subjected to
their influence, but should be regulated by the results
of practical experience.

But it has been contended, that the experience
gained by such voluntary trials of the principle of the
Conscience Clause, is not a satisfactory test : that
the school which has flourished while governed
by the principle, would begin to go to ruin, as soon
as it became a matter of legal right. That is the
ground taken by the Committee of the National
Society in their last Report. And the way in which
the subject is there treated, seems to me highly
worthy of note in more respects than one. They
state that they have always felt it their duty to object
to the Conscience Clause as a condition of assistance
from the Parliamentary grant. The fact indeed is

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

unquestionable. And when we consider that this
opposition, carried on to a rupture between the
National Society and the Committee of Council, has
actually — which ever party may be responsible for it
— caused a great amount of serious inconvenience,
not to say positive evil ; perplexity in the minds of
school managers, and obstruction to the work of
education ; it was certainly to be expected that the
Committee, when they stated the fact, would assign
a reason sufficient to show that the course they had
pursued had indeed been prescribed to them by an
inflexible law of duty.

But the ground which they assign is one which, to
those who take the higher view of the inalienable
prerogative and indispensable duty of the Church,
must appear pitiably weak, and, when put forward
alone, and therefore as the strongest, as amounting
to little less than a treacherous abandonment of the
cause, at least to a pusillanimous suppression of the
truth. They say, “ No such provision is practically
required for the protection of Nonconformists, for
Nonconformist parents and guardians scarcely ever
object to the religious instruction given in National
Schools ; and when they do, the clergy and school
managers almost invariably consent to some arrange-
ment by which the objection is removed55 (in other
words they act on the principle of the Conscience
Clause). “ If, however,” the Report proceeds, “an
arrangement of this kind were made a matter of legal
right, it may be feared that the peace and harmony
which now prevail in parishes with regard to educa-
tion would be broken — that parents and guardians
might frequently be influenced to demand as a right
what they seldom care to ask for as a favour.55 No
doubt, the Committee had very good reason for

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

taking this low ground, however it might dissatisfy
and displease one section of their friends, who were
most strenuous in opposition to the Clause. They
were no doubt aware that the transcendental argu-
ment might do good service in its proper place ; that
it was well adapted for rhetorical effect, and, when
wielded by an able speaker, might kindle a useful
enthusiasm in a mixed assembly. But they probably
felt that it was one which would not bear to be pro-
duced in a Report dealing with real facts, and could
not be supposed to have influenced the minds of
a Committee, composed in great part of laymen,
who, while warm friends of the Church, were also
clear-headed men of business. The reason assigned
therefore was such, as they need not be ashamed to
avow. But it laboured under the disadvantage and
defect of being drawn, not from experience, but from
conjecture : and experience, as far as it has gone, has
proved the conjecture to be mistaken. The Clause
has been accepted without the consequences which it
was feared would ensue, when that which was con-
ceded as an indulgence should become a matter of
legal right. I have been assured by a clergyman who
has had practical experience of the working of the
Clause in large schools in the neighbourhood of
London 9, that there are “ no practical difficulties
whatever in carrying it out.” And one well authen-
ticated case in which the Clause has not only been
accepted, but acted upon, and the right which it
gives has been actually claimed on behalf of some of
the children, seems decisive. But even without such
testimony, I own that I should think meanly of the
administrative ability of a clergyman who, having the

9 The Rev. T. W. Fowle. See Mr. Oakley’s pamphlet, p. 33.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

will, was unequal to the task of overcoming such a
difficulty. For it must be remembered that the
question can only arise in parishes where Dissenters
are in a minority, and commonly a small one. But I
readily admit that the more or less of difficulty that
may be found in adjusting the work of a Church
school to the operation of the Conscience Clause, is
quite a secondary consideration, and that what has
the foremost claim on our attention are the principles
which are said to be at stake in this dispute.

There are two which lie at the root of the Con-
science Clause. One is, that every child in a parish
has an equal right to a share in the benefits of edu-
cation, for which a provision is made out of public
money. The other is, that every parent — not labour-
ing under legal disability — has a right to regulate
the religious education of his children according to
his own views. I am not aware that either of these
propositions has been disputed, as a general prin-
ciple, even by the most thorough-going opponents of
the Conscience Clause ; but it has been denied that
they can be properly brought to bear upon it. It is
contended that there are other principles, irrecon-
cilable with the Clause, which have a prior claim to
rule the decision of the question, and so prevent the
first from ever coming into play. The right of the
child, we are told, cannot justly be allowed to over-
ride one previously acquired by the Church : espe-
cially as it is always in the power of the State to
make a separate provision for the Dissenting minority,
however small. Even if there be only half a dozen,
a school may be built, and a master paid for their
instruction. The opponents of the Clause are liberal
of the public money, and would not grudge an ex-
pense which it is to defray. But as outside of their

OP THE DIOCESE OP ST. DAVID’S.

circle it would be universally regarded as a scan-
dalous waste, it is morally and practically impossible.
This therefore is not a real alternative. The choice
lies between the exclusion of some children from all
the benefits of the school, and their admission, on
terms which are said to be a violation of compact
betiveen Church and State ; to interfere with the reli-
gious instruction of Church schools , to introduce a
system of secular education , and thus to undermine
the foundation of religion. How far the Clause is
open to these charges, is the point on which, in the
eye of clergymen, and of all faithful Churchmen, the
question must ultimately turn, and on which it must
depend whether they can justly or safely accept the
Clause.

It is to me satisfactory to find that little more is
needed for the refutation of these statements, than
to translate them into more exact terms, and to
supply that which is wanted to make them fully
intelligible. As soon as the light of truth and com-
mon sense is turned upon them, they seem to melt
into air. The question as to breach of compact , is,
as I observed, irrelevant to the merits of the Clause.
But yet the complaint suggests the idea of a wrong
done to the clergyman, whose application for aid is
refused, because he will not admit children of Dis-
senters into his school without teaching them every
doctrine of the Church. But it has not, I think,
even been asserted, that there was ever any compact
which bound the Committee of Council to forego the
exercise of their own discretion in giving or with-
holding their aid. It may be a question whether
they have exercised it rightly or not, but this must
depend, not on the supposed compact , but on the cir-
cumstances of the case. We may imagine a corres-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

pondence running in some such form as this. The
clergyman writes : “ I ask for a grant toward the
education of the poor of my parish. It contains a
few Dissenters, Baptists, and others, who probably
will not send their children to school, because my
conscience does not permit me to receive any chil-
dren whom I am not to instruct in all the doctrines
of the Church.’ ’ The answer might be, uWe are
sorry that such should be the dictate of your con-
science ; but, as stewards of the public purse, we
have a conscience too. And we should think it a
misapplication of the fund committed to our disposal,
if we were to build either two schools for so small a
population, or one school only, from which a part of
the population was to be excluded. We offer no
violence to your conscientious scruples ; we trust
that you will respect ours. If you are resolved to
admit Dissenting children on no other terms, we
must reserve our grant until you shall have brought
over all your parishioners to your own way of think-
ing?” I must own that I do not see how this can
be properly described as a compulsory imposition of
the Conscience Clause ; language which suggests an
idea of violence which has not and could not
be used. It would be quite as correct to say, that
the clergyman compelled the Committee of Council
to withhold the grant, as that, in the opposite event,
they compelled him to accept it on their conditions.
But all that is important is, that it should be dis-
tinctly understood in what sense the terms are used,
and that, as between the clergyman and the Com-
mittee of Council, there is no breach of compact
whatever. It is true that many suffer from the
disagreement. The children of the parish may lose
the benefit of education. But it cannot be fairly

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

assumed that the fault lies on one side more than on
the other. The principle on which the grant was
refused, may have been quite as sincerely held, as
that on which it was declined. In every point of
view it is entitled to equal respect. Which of the
two is the most just and reasonable, is a question on
which every one must be left to form his own
opinion.

So again, if we inquire in what sense it is asserted
that the Clause interferes with the religious instruc-
tion of Church schools , it turns out that it is a sense
so remote from that which the expression naturally
suggests, and which it has probably conveyed to
most minds, that any argument founded on its
apparent meaning must be utterly delusive. It
is not denied, that a clergyman who has accepted
the Clause, not only remains at perfect liberty, but
is as much as ever required to instruct all the
children of his own communion in all the doctrines
of his Church. So far the Clause does not in the
slightest degree interfere with this branch of his
pastoral office. But there is a sense in which it
certainly may be said to interfere with his teaching.
It interferes to prevent him from forcing that teach-
ing on children whose parents wish that they should
not receive it. This may be right or wrong; but
certainly it is something of a very different kind;
something to which the term interference is not
usually applied. We do not commonly speak of
interference as an intermeddling, when any one is
prevented from doing a wrong to his neighbour.
The clergy are used to such interference in other
parts of their office, and never complain of it. It is
both their right and their duty to instruct their
parishioners in the doctrines of the Church. But

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

in the exercise of this right, and the discharge of
this duty, they are subject to a Conscience Clause,
which does not even depend on their acceptance of
it, but is enforced by the law. They may teach all
who are willing to learn from them; but they are
not allowed to force themselves into the pulpit of the
Dissenting minister, for the purpose of instructing
his congregation, nor to drag that congregation into
the parish church. They submit most cheerfully to
this interference. I should be surprised if there was
one who desired more liberty in this respect, or
did not abhor the thought of the dragonades of
Louis XIY. Where then lies the hardship of a like
interference — if it is to be so called — when it limits
their right of teaching the children of their schools,
who, in case of danger, have still greater need of
protection? Some distinction must be drawn, to
show that what is so imperatively demanded by
justice in the one case, becomes a wrong in the
other. The distinction which has been drawn for
this purpose rests on the assertion, that, although
the religious instruction of the school may be pre-
cisely what it would have been, if there had been
none but children of Churchmen in it, the presence
of one who is withdrawn from this instruction, as
the child of a Dissenter, vitiates and counteracts the
effects of the whole. The Church children are de-
prived of all the benefit they would otherwise have
gained from their religious teaching, while the know-
ledge imparted to the Dissenting child, being, as it
is assumed, divorced from religion, is worse than
useless.

I say, as it is assumed , because the argument rests
on the wholly arbitrary and groundless assumption,
that unless the child receives religious instruction in

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

the school, he will receive none at all ; whereas the
far more probable presumption is, that the parent
who withdraws his child from the religious teaching
of the school on conscientious grounds, will be the
least likely to neglect his religious education. The
supreme importance of moral and religious training,
as distinguished from mere intellectual cultivation,
may be fully admitted, but must be laid aside as a
truth wholly foreign to this question ; while the
general proposition, that it is better for a child to
receive no instruction of any kind than to attend a
school in which it learns nothing but reading, writing,
and arithmetic ’°, and that the moral discipline of the
school, however excellent in itself, is utterly worth-
less, is one of that class which it is sufficient to state.
For those who are capable of maintaining it, it admits
of no refutation ; for the rest of mankind it needs
none. No doubt most Churchmen, and probably
every clergyman, would greatly prefer a school,
however inferior in other respects, in which religious
instruction according to the doctrine of the Church
occupies the foremost place, to the public schools of
the United States. But that these are worse than
useless, nurseries of diabolical wickedness, armed
with intellectual power, and that it would have been
better for those who have been trained in them if
they had grown up in utter ignorance of all that they
learned there, is an opinion held probably by few. I
do not attempt to refute it. I only wish to observe
that it is an indispensable link in the chain of reason-
ing by which the Conscience Clause is made out to

10 “As to reading, writing, and arithmetic, I think that without
religion ( subaudi , such as I would teach them) they are better
without it.” Archdeacon Denison’s evidence before the Select
Committee on Education, 37G4.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

be an interference with the religious instruction of
Church schools. But when we hear that the benefit
of this instruction is neutralized by the presence of a
child who has been withdrawn from it at the desire
of his parents, and so the religion of the place
damaged, we cannot help asking, If the religious
principles of the Church children are cc poisoned5 *
when they find that some of their schoolfellows
belong to the meeting-house, how are those principles
to survive the inevitable discovery that this is the
case with some of their young neighbours, though
not admitted into the school ? And as this would
imply incredible ignorance and more than childish
simplicity, so, when it is intimated that they will
infer from the fact that their own teachers are indif-
ferent to religion *, this is really to charge them with
an excess of intellectual perversity, and of calumnious
misconstruction, of which childhood is happily in-
capable, and which is reserved for riper years, and
for minds that have undergone the baneful influence
of long habits of political or religious controversy.

After this, we shall not find it difficult to do
justice to the assertion, that the Conscience Clause
virtually insinuates the poisonous and deadly prin-
ciple of secular education into the heart of the
Denominational System. We must observe that, in-
dependently of any Conscience Clause, this evil prin-
ciple must be found in every Church school. In all,
the education consists of three parts : the moral
discipline — which the Clause does not in any way
affect — the secular instruction, and the religious
instruction. All the children may be said to be
receiving secular education during one, and that the

1 See “ reason ” four of Archdeacon Denison’s seventeen.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

longest period of their school work. The effect of
the Conscience Clause is, that some receive in the
school secular instruction only. But the character
of a school must depend on that which it professes
and offers to give, not on the number of those who re-
ceive all that it offers. A grammar school does not
lose its character as such because all the scholars do
not learn Latin and Greek, but at the wish of their
parents are allowed to devote then* time to a different
course of study. But I am aware how this view of
the case has been met by the opponents of the
Conscience Clause ; and it appears to me that a
simple statement of their argument is sufficient to
establish the truth of that which they controvert. It
is argued that there ought to be no such thing as
purely secular instruction in a Church school ; that
all manner of knowledge should be “ interpenetrated
with a definite objective and dogmatic faith ; ” and that
“ the thread of religion should run through the
whole, from one end to the other2.5’ It may appear,
at first sight, as if these phrases were utterly un-
meaning, and could only have been used by persons
who had never reflected whether they are capable of
any application to the real work of a school. How,
it may be asked, is a sum in the Rule of Three to be
64 interpenetrated ” with a definite, objective and dog-
matic faith ? That may seem hard ; but I am afraid
that it has been thought possible, and that excellent
persons have believed they had accomplished it, by
selecting examples of the rules of arithmetic out of
Scripture. I leave it to others to judge how far this
is likely to cherish reverence for Holy Scripture, or

8 Archdeacon Denison’s speech in Convocation on the Conscience
Clause, pp. 16. 23.

C 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

to imbue young minds with dogmatic faith. I only
say this is the nearest approach I have yet heard of
toward reducing the maxim into practice. I am not
aware whether there are yet Church schools where
all the copies in the writing-books are enunciations
of dogma, and all the reading lessons extracted from
treatises on dogmatic theology. But this appears to
be absolutely necessary for the completeness of the
system, as the completeness of the system is essen-
tial to the force of the argument. It must be
presumed that the persons who insist on this argu-
ment enjoy a privilege which falls to the lot of very
few clergymen, that of leisure, enabling them con-
stantly to superintend the whole course of instruction
in their parish schools, so as to make sure that every
part, however nominally secular, is thoroughly “ inter-
penetrated with a definite, objective and dogmatic
faith.” It cannot be supposed that they would feel
themselves at liberty to commit so very difficult and
delicate an operation to the schoolmaster, who can
hardly ever be capable of conducting it. Even in
their own hands, it must always require infinite
caution, and be attended with extreme danger of a
most fearful evil. The practice of improving , as it is
called, all subjects of study by the importation of re-
ligious, particularly dogmatic, reflections, apparently
quite irrelevant to their nature, seems much less likely
to form habits of genuine piety than either to corrupt
the simplicity of the child’s character, or to disgust
him with that which is so obtruded on his thoughts,
and to lead him to suspect the earnestness and sincerity
of his teachers. And one can hardly help indulging
a hope that, if we were admitted to see the ordinary
work of the schools, which must be supposed to
exhibit the most perfect models of such religious

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

education, we should find that they do not materially
differ in this respect from others of humbler preten-
sions, and that the practice falls very far short of
the theory ; each being, in fact, applied to a distinct
use ; the one serving as an instrument of rational and
wholesome instruction, the other as a weapon for
battling against the Conscience Clause.

There is another aspect of the subject, which I
cannot pass by in silence, because it is perhaps the
most important of all, though I advert to it with
some hesitation and reluctance. Unhappily there can
be no doubt that a clergyman may be convinced that
it is his duty to close the doors of his parish school
against every child whom he is not at liberty to
instruct in all the doctrines of the Church. He may
firmly believe that, apart from this instruction, every
thing else that is taught in the school is not only
worthless, but positively pernicious, “ not a blessing,
but a curse3,” and therefore that kindness toward the
child — if there were no other motive — demands that
it should be guarded from this evil. To others, who
quite as fully admit the supreme importance of reli-
gious education, it may appear that this is straining
the principle to a length which shocks the common
sense of mankind. That, however, is no reason
whatever for questioning the perfect sincerity of
those by whom the opinion is professed. But it is
not credible that any clergyman should not be aware
that this is not the view commonly taken of the
subject by fathers of families in the labouring classes.
He cannot help knowing that, probably without
exception, they regard the secular instruction —
whether accompanied with religious teaching or

8 Archdeacon Denison, u. s.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

not — as a great benefit to their children, one on
which their prospects in life mainly depend, one
therefore for which an intelligent and affectionate
parent is willing to make great sacrifices. A Dissenter
who knows that he can obtain these advantages at the
parish school, together with a superintendence which
may be urgently needed for the child’s safety, though
clogged with the condition of its being brought up
with the view of making it a proselyte to the Church,
and severed from the religious connection in which
he wishes it to remain, will be strongly tempted to
purchase an advantage which he believes to be great,
at a risk which, he may hope will prove to be small.
He may know that the religious impressions which are
commonly left on the mind of the child by the school
teaching — especially that which relates to abstruse
theological dogmas — are seldom very deep, and that
unless they are renewed after it has left school, they
will vanish of themselves, and will be easily counter-
acted by parental authority. He may therefore con-
sent to expose his child to the danger, though it will
be with reluctance, in proportion to the sincerity of
his own convictions. Few, I think, will be disposed
to condemn him very severely, if he yields to such a
temptation. But in the eyes of a clergyman, who
attaches supreme value to a “ definite, objective, and
dogmatic faith,” he must appear to be guilty of a
breach of a most sacred duty ; to be bartering his
child’s eternal welfare for temporal benefits ; to be
acting a double part, allowing his child to be taught
that which he intends it to unlearn, and to profess
that which he hopes it will never believe. Can it be
right for a clergyman holding such views, to take
advantage of the poor man’s necessity and weakness,
for the sake of making a proselyte of the child ? Is

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

he not really bribing the father to do wrong, and
holding out a strong temptation to duplicity and
hypocrisy, when he admits the child into his school
on such terms ? And when he enforces them by
instruction which is intended to alienate the child
from the father in their religious belief, is he not
oppressing the poor and needy ? I can understand,
though I cannot sympathize with it, the rigidity of
conscience which closes the school against Dis-
senters : but I cannot reconcile it with the laxity of
conscience which admits them on such terms.

I must own that I have been sorry to observe the fre-
quent reference which has been made in the discussion
of this question, to what is called, “ the missionary
office of the Church in educating the children of the
sects 4.” I do not much like to see the word mis-
sionary used with reference to the “ sects.” I do
not think it will tend to produce a happier state of
feeling between the Church and the Dissenters, if
they find that we speak of them as if they were
heathen. It has indeed always been the policy of
the Church of Rome to deny the right of all Pro-
testants, Anglicans among the rest, to the name of
Christians 5. But this is one of the points in which
I do not desire to see a nearer approximation to the
Romish spirit or practice. But if the Church is to
discharge her “ missionary office in educating the

4 Archdeacon Denison, u. s.

6 “ The Catholics,” writes the Spanish ambassador, “ your High-
ness is aware, are also against her marriage with the Duke of
Norfolk, not being assured that he is a Christian. The Earl of
Arundel and Lord Lumley undertake however that the Duke will
submit to the Holy See.” (Froude, Elizabeth, iv. p. 104.) Most
persons who know something of Roman Catholic countries, would
probably testify from their own experience, that this is still the
language which expresses at least the popular view of the subject.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

children of the sects,” this can only be done by
placing them under the instruction of missionaries,
who will bring them over to the belief, that the reli-
gion of their parents — whether better than heathen-
ism or not — is a false religion6. To do this against
the will Qf the parents — and as long as they remain
Dissenters it must be against their will, though they
may have been induced by worldly motives to suffer
the experiment to be made — appears to me a shameful
abuse of an opportunity, which it was wrong to give,
but far more culpable to take.

We have been seasonably reminded7 of an occur-
rence with which Europe was ringing a few years
ago — the foul deed by which, under colour of a sacri-
legious abuse of the Sacrament of Baptism, a Jewish
child was torn from its parents, to be brought up in
the tenets of the Church of Rome. This outrage was
sanctioned by the highest authorities of that Church.
Much as it shocks our moral sense, we have no reason
to doubt, that all who were parties to it acted accord-
ing to the dictates of their conscience, and from
motives of kindness toward the child. As much may
be said for those who entice Dissenters into their
schools, by opening the door to them, and then exer-
cise the missionary office of the Church upon them 8.
There is indeed a difference between the two cases,
but I am not sure that it is in favour of the Anglican

" “No religion is true, except the religion of the Church of
England.” Archdeacon Denison, evidence, 3881. It is the old
maxim, which had not been thought over-lax, with a special restric-
tion : Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam — Anglicanam.

T Professor Plumptre, u. s. p. 593.

8 So Archdeacon Denison, u. s. 3823. “We may be obliged to
do things sometimes which may appear to trench upon other
people’s rights, but I do not think that there is necessarily un-
kindness connected with it,”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

mode of proceeding. Tlie Mortara case was one
of sheer brute violence. There was no attempt
to corrupt or tamper with the conscience of the
parents. They protested against the abduction with
all the energy of grief. It would have been far
worse for them, if their consent had been bought :
and the transaction, on the part of the purchaser,
would have been not less unjust, but more dishonour-
able. We are indignant, but not surprised, when we
hear of such acts in the Church of Rome. We are
too familiar with numberless examples in which she
appears to have acted on the maxim, “ Let us do
evil, that good may come.” But, that conduct which
can only be justified by that maxim, should be avowed
by clergymen of high position in our Church at this
day, is both humiliating and alarming. There ought
to be no need of such a provision as a Conscience
Clause in this country. I at the time believed that
it was not, and never would be needed. But when I
find that some of the most honourable and high
minded men among the clergy, may be betrayed by
their professional studies and associations into a
breach of morality, from which, if it had not seemed
to them to be sanctified by the end, they would have
instinctively recoiled, I am forced to the conclusion,
that the protection afforded by the Conscience Clause
can not be either justly or safely withheld. Even if
it was not needed as a safeguard against a practical
wrong, it would be valuable as a protest against a
false principle.

I do not myself think that the language of the
Clause can be fairly taxed with ambiguity ; though
both it and some explanations which have been given of
it by the highest authority, have been strangely mis-
understood. If, however, it be possible to make it

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

less liable to unintentional misconstruction, it would
no doubt be most desirable that tbis should be done.
But that, as long as the circumstances of the parish
remain the same, that is, such that no second school
can be founded there, succeeding managers should be
enabled to release themselves from the clause, on
refunding the Building Grant, and renouncing the
aid of the State for the future, is a proposal to which
the State could not consent, without giving up the
whole matter in dispute, and admitting that it had
no right to fetter the discretion of the managers.
This indeed has been treated as a distinct grievance.
Even, it is said, if a clergyman may accept such a
restraint for himself, he can have no right to impose
it on his successors. But those who most stren-
uously protest against such a right of perpetuating
the Conscience Clause, are the very persons who, a
few years ago, applauded the Committee of the
National Society, when it deliberately sanctioned a
clause in a trust deed, which enforced the teaching
of the Catechism to every child in a school, though
in patent contradiction to its own repeated profes-
sions, of giving the largest liberty to the clergyman in
dealing with exceptional cases of Dissenting children9.
I now pass to another subject.

Not long after our last meeting an event occurred
which caused very deep and wide spread agitation in
the Church, an agitation which has by no means yet
subsided, and of which perhaps the final conse-
quences still remain to be seen. I allude to the
decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in the case of two of the contributors to

9 See the evidence of the Rev. J. Gr. Lonsdale before the Select
Committee on Education, 1553 and 1844.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 43

the volume of “ Essays and Reviews.” The Judg-
ment given in their favour was thought to sanction a
new and excessive latitude of opinion with regard to
the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and the awful
mystery of future retribution. To counteract this
effect some clergymen of high reputation and in-
fluence framed a Declaration, expressing the belief
that the doctrines which the Judgment seemed to
leave open to question were doctrines maintained by
the Church of England, and for this document they
procured the signatures of a majority of the whole
body of the English clergy. The value of this De-
claration was indeed very much impaired by the
ambiguity of its language, and it appeared to me
consistent with the utmost respect for all who had
signed it, to doubt whether it could serve any useful
purpose, and was not more likely to create misunder-
standing and confusion. It might be considered as
a statement of the private belief of each of the
subscribers in the doctrines which were supposed
to have been unsettled. In this point of view it was
indeed perfectly harmless, but as it was then only the
exercise of a right which had never been disputed, it
was not easy to see its practical drift. On the other
hand, if it was taken as affecting to decide what was
the doctrine of the Church on certain controverted
points, and in opposition to the decision of the
Supreme Court of Appeal, it seemed to invest a
fortuitous, self-constituted aggregate of persons pos-
sessing no legislative or judicial authority, with
functions for which, apart from all regard to their
personal qualifications, they were manifestly utterly
incompetent.

If the promoters of this movement had any ground
for congratulating themselves on its success, as

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

indicated by the number of signatures attached to the
Declaration, it could only be with a view to some
ulterior object for which it might prepare the way,
and though no such aim was openly avowed, sub-
sequent proceedings appeared to show what it either
was or might have been. Such was the chief, if not
the sole motive, of the wish which was expressed in
both Houses of Convocation and elsewhere, for the
renewal of Diocesan Synods. It was hoped that these
assemblies might be made available for the promulga-
tion of “ some declaration of faith as to matters
which were thought then to be in danger1.” They
might serve other purposes, but this was evidently
that which was foremost in the minds of those who
conceived the project, and I think I shall not be
wasting your time if I make a few remarks on this
subject.

There seems to be no room to doubt that the
convening of such Synods is perfectly within the
power of the Bishop, and not subject to any of the
restrictions which make the assembling and the
action of Provincial Synods to depend on the au-
thority of the Crown. No Boyal licence is needed
for it, any more than for our present gathering. And
it has been observed by a writer of high authority in
these matters, that “ Diocesan Synods are represented
among us at this day by episcopal visitations2.”
There is certainly some degree of resemblance be-
tween the two institutions. But there is also one
material difference : that, with one or two exceptions,
there is no Diocese in which the whole body of the
clergy are assembled at the same place to meet the

1 See Chronicle of Convocation, April, 1864, pp. 1467. 1486.

3 Joyce, “ England’s Sacred Synods,” p. 80.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

Bishop on his Visitation, and the assembly which is
held on that occasion in each Archdeaconry could
not easily be converted into a Diocesan Synod. The
proper character and special value of this Synod
depend on the attendance of the clergy from all
parts of the Diocese. In early times, when every
part of the Diocese was commonly within an easy
distance from the chief town where the Bishop re-
sided, there would be no difficulty in the bringing of
all the presbyters together, and they would seldom
form a very numerous assemblage. In the present
state of things the difficulty or inconvenience would
in most Dioceses be considerable, and the numbers
assembled, even of the clergy alone, would be so
large as to be ill fitted to the purpose of united
deliberation. Such, at least, was the opinion of
some who advocated the measure. It was therefore
proposed to guard against this inconvenience, as in
our Provincial Synods, by a system of representation,
which, however, has yet not only to be tried in
practice but to be constructed in theory. Whether
any such existed in the primitive Churches, though it
has been asserted 3, seems very doubtful, and hardly
capable of proof4. In the Reformatio Legum the
attendance of all the clergy is most strictly enjoined 5 .
With regard to the clergy, indeed, it would no doubt
be easy enough to devise a mode by which as -many
of them as chose to forego the right or the privilege
of personal attendance might be fairly represented.
If there is to be a restoration of Diocesan Synods, that

8 Kennett on Synods, p. 198. Lathbury, History of Convoca-
tion, p. 6.

4 Joyce, p. 44.

5 Cap. 20. “ A Synodo nulli ex clericis abesse licebit, nisi ejns

excusationein episcopus ipse approbaverit.”

A OHAEGE TO THE CLEEGY

right could not well be taken away from any of the
presbyters, and the exercise of it, though it might
be onerous to those who lived far away from the
place of meeting, might not be disagreeable to those
who lived near at hand. In either case the whole
proceeding would be purely voluntary. No part of
it could be enforced by any legal authority.

But another new and prominent feature in the
constitution of the restored Synod, and that to which
the highest value was justly attached, was the ad-
mission of the laity to a share in its functions. To
awaken in lay Churchmen a livelier interest in the
affairs of the Church, to bring them into regular
and friendly intercourse with the clergy, to draw
forth the expression of their views on Church ques-
tions, was described as the chief permanent ad-
vantage contemplated in the proposal ; one which
would give these assemblies an importance superior
to that of the Provincial Convocations themselves,
from which the laity are excluded, as more faithfully
or more surely representing the mind of the Church.
This, though as it seems an innovation on ancient
usage6, is quite in accordance with the directions
of the Reformatio Legum , by which laymen selected
by the Bishop are allowed to be present at his
private conference with the clergy, though whether
in any other capacity than that of listeners does not
appear 7. This is no doubt the most attractive side
of the scheme. We all set the highest value on
the presence and counsel of our lay brethren on

6 See Chronicle of Convocation, April 20, 1864, p. 1505.

7 The impression it leaves is decidedly for the negative. Cap.
22 : “ Ibi de qusestionibus rerum controversarum interrogabuntur
singuli presbyteri. Episcopus vero doctiorum sententias patienter
colliget.”

OP THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

every occasion which brings us together for the
carrying on of our common work. We are glad
to learn their opinions, feelings, and wishes on all
questions concerning the welfare of our common
Church. An excellent person very lately taken from
us (Mr. Henry Hoare) earned a title to the gratitude
of the Church, which has been publicly acknowledged
in Convocation, by the efforts which he made to
promote such intercourse between the clergy and
laity. The course prescribed in the Reformatio
Legum would perhaps have been sufficient for this
purpose. But that which is contemplated in the
proposed revival of the Diocesan Synod is much more
than this, and something very different. It is a
system of representation similar to that which is
proposed for the clergy. I believe that to organize
such a system would in every Diocese be found very
difficult, in most quite impracticable. It has been
suggested that the election of the lay members might
be entrusted to the churchwardens. I will only say
that, until the churchwardens themselves are elected
with a view to the discharge of this function, I can
hardly conceive that such a representation would
either be satisfactory to the whole body of the laity,
or be regarded as an adequate exponent of their
mind and will. These, however, are only practical
difficulties which may be found capable of some
solution which I do not now perceive. The more
important question is that of the functions to be
assigned to the new Synod. It seems to be admitted
that the deliberations of the old Diocesan Synods
were confined — as indeed might have been expected —
to the affairs of the Diocese. And in the Reformatio
Legum there is not only no intimation that they
were intended to be occupied by any other kind

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

of business, but the enumeration there given of the
subjects of discussion seems clearly to imply the
same limitation. They relate indeed mainly to the
state of religion, with respect to soundness of doc-
trine and legal uniformity of ritual, but to both evi-
dently no farther than as they came under observation
within the Diocese. But the consultations of the
Synod now proposed are intended to take a far wider
range; one, in fact, co-extensive with those of the
Provincial Synods, and, like them, embracing every
kind of question affecting the interests of the Church
at large. This is obviously implied in the peculiar
advantage which is expected to arise from the pre-
sence of the laity, whose views, transmitted to
Convocation, are to inform its mind, to guide its
judgment, and, where action has to be +aken, to
strengthen its hands.

I must own that I could not look forward without
alarm to such a multiplication of Synods, if one is to
be held every year in every Diocese. And, on the
other hand, if only two or three Bishops were to
adopt the plan, I should not feel a perfect confidence
that the conclusions arrived at might not rather
represent their private opinions than the general
sense of the whole body. The presence of the pre-
siding Bishop is, on every supposition, a most im-
portant element in the calculation of consequences.
His official station must always give great weight to
his opinion, which, even if not expressed, is sure to
be known. It may happen that his influence is so
strengthened by his personal qualities as to be prac-
tically irresistible, and that every measure which he
recommends is sure to be carried with blind con-
fidence, or with silent though reluctant acquiescence.
But the opposite case is also conceivable. It may

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID* S.

happen that questions arise, on which the opinion
and convictions of the Bishop are opposed to those
of the majority of his clergy. I am afraid I may
speak of this from my own experience. Such oppo-
sition is no doubt always to be lamented ; but where
it exists, it neither can nor ought to be kept secret.
A frank avowal of opinion on both sides is most
desirable for the interests of truth. But it would
not, as I think, be desirable, but, on the contrary, a
serious misfortune, if this divergency of views was to
manifest itself in the vote of a Diocesan Synod on a
practical question, so that either the opinion of the
majority must overrule that of the Bishop, or the
action of the Bishop contradict the express wish* of
the majority.

I may illustrate this possibility by reference to a
controversy which has been recently stirred. There
is a party in the Church which holds that a Bishop
is bound, morally if not legally, to confirm every
child who is brought to him at the earliest age con-
sistent with the direction at the end of the Office for
Baptism of Infants, and without reference to that
which is implied in the language of the Preface to
the Confirmation Office, which supposes the can-
didates to have “ come to years of discretion.” On
the other hand, there are Bishops who — having
respect to the terms of the Baptismal Office itself,
which requires instruction in the Catechism as a
previous condition, to the highly mysterious nature
of the doctrines set forth in the Catechism, more
particularly in the concluding part, to the ordinary
development of our moral and intellectual nature,
and to the testimony of their own experience and
observation, — I say there are Bishops who, consider-
ing these things, have felt themselves bound to lay

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

down a general rule, limiting tlie admission of can-
didates to a later period, wlien the rite may be ex-
pected to leave a deeper impression, and who believe
that to rely on the grace which may no doubt attend
the ministration at every age, or make up for the
deficiency of ordinary capacity, is no proof of faith,
but a presumptuous and profane abuse of the rite.
By acting on this view of the subject, they have
incurred much acrimonious censure, which however
has not in the least shaken their conviction. But if
the party to which I alluded was to gain the
ascendancy in a Diocesan Synod, where the pre-
siding Bishop took that view of his duty, and the
question was raised, it would be decided in a way
which, though the language used might be milder
and more decorous, must in substance amount to a
vote of censure on him, which the dictates of his
conscience would compel him to disregard. I do
not see how such an exhibition of discordant views
would be likely to serve any useful purpose, or could
be attended with any but very injurious conse-
quences.

For all purely Diocesan purposes, the conferences
which I have always desired to see established in
every Rural Deanery, appear to me to possess a
great advantage over the Diocesan Synod, however
constituted. They afford the means of a freer, more
intimate, and confidential intercourse and inter-
change of ideas, than is possible in a large assembly
of persons who are mostly strangers to one another.
The benefit which they yield is unalloyed, and free
from all danger; and I must take this occasion to
observe, that they seem peculiarly well adapted for
the discussion of some of the questions which have
recently occupied a large share of the attention of

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

tlie Church, relating as they do to matters of practice
with which the Clergy have constantly to deal, and
in which they are to a very great extent at liberty
to act on their own judgment. Let me assure my
reverend brethren — though many of them, no doubt,
are fully aware of the fact — that many of these ques-
tions, though of great practical importance, are by no
means so simple as they may appear to any one who
has looked at them only from one side, or under the
influence of traditional associations. But, apart from
any such special object, it is certain that a clergyman
who lives in constant spiritual isolation from his
brethren, meeting them only on secular or merely
formal occasions, but, in the things which most
deeply concern the work of his calling, stands wholly
aloof from them, shut up within the narrow round of
his own thoughts, reading, and experience, must lose
what might be a most precious aid, both to his
personal edification and his ministerial usefulness.
If he was imprisoned in this solitude, as may happen
to a missionary at a lonely station, by causes beyond
his control, he would be worthy of pity. If the
seclusion is voluntary and self-imposed, when the
benefits of intellectual and spiritual communion with
his brethren are within his reach, it can hardly be
reconciled with a right sense of duty, or a real
interest in his Master’s service.

For such purposes no Diocesan Synod can super-
sede the Buridecanal Meeting, while, for the purpose
of ascertaining the mind of the laity on Church
questions, and bringing it to bear both on Convoca-
tion and the Legislature, another kind of machinery
has been not only devised, but actually framed and
set in motion, which, though its organization may
be susceptible of great improvement, seems to me in

D 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

its general idea far more appropriate, as well as
much more easily applicable to the object, than a
multitude of Diocesan Synods, subject to perpetual
variation in their number, and depending on con-
tingencies which cannot be foreseen, for their very
existence, and still more for their capacity of furnish-
ing an adequate or faithful representation of the
whole body of lay Churchmen ; I allude to the asso-
ciation founded by the late Mr. Hoare under the
name of the Church Institution. It is now six years
since I drew your attention to this subject in a
Charge, expressing my sympathy with the general
aim and spirit of the association, but at the same
time stating some objections which had been made
to its organization, as laying it open to the suspicion
of reflecting a particular shade of opinion rather
than the common feeling of the Church. Three
years ago the subject was brought before the Upper
House of Convocation, when the usefulness of the
Church Institution was fully recognized, and its
fundamental principle unanimously admitted, but
with the same qualification as to the precise form of
its organization, which however has not, as far as I
am aware, been yet altered ; perhaps because expe-
rience has shown that the danger apprehended from
it is not very serious, and does not practically affect
the working of the Institution.

But there is a purpose for which the Diocesan
Synod, in its primitive form, as a full assembly of all
the clergy of the Diocese, with the addition of as
many of the lay members of the Church as may be
willing to meet them, is eminently well fitted, and
just in the same degree as it is ill fitted for any
decision which requires calm discussion and orderly
deliberation. This is the purpose of proclaiming

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

any foregone conclusion, and of passing resolutions
by acclamation, without a dissentient voice. This
function of the Diocesan Synod is recognized by a
highly esteemed writer on the subject, whose work
appeared when the Church was deeply agitated by
the Judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in the Gorham Case, as one main ground for
recommending the revival of these Synods, with a
“ close adherence to the primitive model8.” It would
serve “ for the plain assertion of any article of the
faith which may have been notoriously impugned.”
And in the Diocese in which an article of faith was
supposed to have been impugned by the decision of
the Judicial Committee in the Gorham Case, such a
Diocesan Synod was assembled, and did make “ a
plain assertion” of the article. This example has
not been forgotten. Soon after the publication of
the Judgment in the more recent trials for false
doctrine, by which other articles of faith were sup-
posed to be impugned, a resolution was passed at a
meeting of Rural Deans and Archdeacons in the
Diocese of Oxford, declaring “ that the meeting
would rejoice to see the action of Diocesan Synods
restored in the Church of England,” and “that
the circumstances of the present times peculiarly
call for such a gathering for the guardianship of the
faith 9.” Such language inevitably raises the ques-
tion, What is the precise object contemplated by
those who desire to see Diocesan Synods restored
for this purpose? We see at* once that it is some-
thing more than the personal satisfaction which each
member of the Synod might derive from the ex-

Joyce, England’s Sacred Synods, p. 36.
Chronicle of Convocation, April 19, 1864.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

pression of an opinion which he holds in common
with a large body of his brethren. The avowed
object is far more practical and more important. It
is nothing less than “ the guardianship of the faith
which, if “ the circumstances of the present times
peculiarly call for such a gathering” for that end,
must be supposed to be in danger. And the nature
of the danger thus signified is too clear to be mis-
taken : it is that now again, as in the Gorham Judg-
ment, articles of the faith are believed by many to
have been “ impugned;” and hence “ the plain asser-
tion ” of them is again considered as the most press-
ing business of a Diocesan Synod. Now let us
remember how the doctrines which are alleged to be
articles of the faith have been impugned. They
have been impugned in two ways : first, by the
writers who disputed or questioned them, and who
on that account were brought to trial ; and, secondly,
by the solemn Judgment of the highest Court of
Appeal, which, after the amplest discussion and the
maturest deliberation, decided that those, writers
had not, in the matters alleged against them, im-
pugned any article of the faith, and were not liable
to the penalties which they would have incurred if
they had done so.

It would have been possible, and quite as easy, to
have taken the step now proposed when the writings
in which the doctrines in question were assailed
first appeared. Diocesan Synods might have been
assembled, and have “ plainly asserted” that the
propositions which the authors impugned were not
only true, but articles of the faith. None can say
what might not have been the effect of such a pro-
ceeding. It is not impossible that the writers might
have yielded to such a weight of authority, and have

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

retracted and abandoned opinions which they found
to be opposed to those of an overwhelming majority
of their brethren. On the other hand, as they have
the reputation, and perhaps would not disclaim the
name of rationalists, it is equally possible, and on
the whole perhaps rather more probable, that they
would have pleaded at the outset to the jurisdiction ;
would have denied that the question ought or could
be de.cided by a show of hands ; and that even the
assertions of thirty Synods would have been as
powerless as thirty legions, to produce the slightest
change in their convictions. The question would
then have remained exactly where it was before the
Synods met. And not only would their decrees
have made no change whatever in the ecclesiastical
position of the writers whom they condemned ; but
it is clear that they would not have been admitted as
evidence in any Court which had to try the question.
They could add nothing to the force of any proof
which might be required to invest the controverted
doctrines with the character of articles of faith;
much less could they cause any thing which would
not otherwise have been an article of faith to become'
such.

But if such would have been their impotence
before the Judgment of the supreme tribunal had
been pronounced, and therefore while it was possible
that it might confirm their assertions, what efficacy
can the decrees of such Synods, whether few or
many, possess, when they contradict that Judgment ?
How are they to “guard the faith” against any
danger with which it is threatened by the Judgment P
The danger is supposed to arise from the latitude of
opinion allowed to the clergy on certain points. But
as long as the law under which we live remains un-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

changed, no number of voices, either of individuals
or of clerical assemblies, can contract that latitude
by a hair’s breadth.

All this is too evident not to be thoroughly under-
stood by the highly intelligent, sagacious, and well-
informed persons who are promoting the restoration
of Diocesan Synods. It cannot be supposed that
they deceive themselves as to the intrinsic value or
the immediate practical effect, either of Declarations
endorsed by any number of signatures, or of Syno-
dical resolutions proclaimed by any number of voices.
If they attach any importance to such documents
and proceedings, it must be with a view to some
ulterior object. And I think there can be little
doubt what that object is. It is, I believe, the same
which has been only a little more fully disclosed by
the efforts which have been made to bring about a
radical change in the constitution of the Court of
Appeal in ecclesiastical questions. It would pro-
bably be generally admitted that this Court is
capable of some improvements, both in its com-
position and in the form of its proceedings. But
those who are dissatisfied with the Judgment which
gave occasion to this movement, would certainly
care little about any change which did not hold out
a prospect of reversing that Judgment, and of guard-
ing against any like occurrence for the future.
Various plans have been proposed for this purpose ;
but it will be sufficient to notice two of them, which
may be considered as including all the rest, inasmuch
as the others differ from them rather in details than
in principle. One is, to abolish the present Court of
Appeal, and to transfer its jurisdiction to Convoca-
tion, or to some purely ecclesiastical body ; the other
would retain the present Court, but without any

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

ecclesiastical assessors, and would require it, when-
ever the case before it involved any question of faith
and doctrine, to send an issue on these matters to
the spiritual body, which should be constituted for
that purpose, and to let its Judgment be governed
by the answer it receives.

There is one advantage which the first of these
proposals must be admitted to possess over the
second : that it more distinctly and completely em-
bodies a principle which lies at the root of both ; the
exclusion of the laity from all share in the decision
of questions touching the doctrines of the Church.
There are not a few estimable persons — perhaps I
might say a not inconsiderable party in the Church
— who hold that the present constitution of the
highest Court of Appeal is utterly vitiated by the
admixture of the lay element : that this is in itself,
irrespectively of its practical consequences, an in-
tolerable grievance, a badge of an “ ignominious
bondage.” It has been represented as a violation of
the law of Christ, and as “a breach of compact
between Church and State,” by which functions,
now exercised by laymen, were reserved to the
clergy1. The divine origin of the prerogative thus
claimed for the Spiritualty, depends on an interpre-
tation of a few passages of Scripture, which to many
appear no more conclusive than that which is alleged
in proof of the Papal supremacy. The history of the
ages and countries in which the claim was most
generally and submissively accepted by the laity,
would hardly recommend it to any one who does not
regard the Reformation as at best a lamentable
error ; but it sufficiently explains the language which

1 Joyce, Ecclesia Yindicata, pp. 11. 13.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

continued to be used after our separation from Rome,
while the Spiritualty was still identified with the
Church 2, and the tenacity with which the tradition
kept its hold on men’s minds. And, independently
of the notion of a Divine right, and of the pecuhar
illumination which may be supposed to wait upon its
exercise, there is a very solid and palpable ground of
fact, which may at first sight appear to furnish an
irresistible argument for assigning this function to
the clergy. It is one for which they may seem to
be pre-eminently, if not exclusively, fitted, though
not by their calling itself, yet at least by the studies
and habits of their calling. Whenever a question
arises in any branch of human knowledge, those who
are usually consulted upon it are the masters and
professors of the art or science to which it relates.
Wh.en a point is in dispute in the interpretation or
application of the law, the only opinion which is ever
thought to have any weight, is that of experienced
jurists. Why should the maxim, “ cuique in sua
arte credendum,” be less applicable to theology, or
render it less fitting and necessary to submit spiritual
questions to the exclusive cognizance of learned
divines ?

This question is treated by many as unanswer-
able. Yet there is in one respect a wide differ-
ence between the two cases, which at first sight
appear most exactly similar, and it deeply affects
the validity of the practical conclusion. We know
of no such thing as schools of law, by which
lawyers are divided into parties, holding the most
widely diverging views on many of the most im-

2 24 Hen. VIII. 12, Preamble: “The Spiritualty, now being
commonly called the English Church.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

portant principles of legal learning, and thus lead to
directly opposite conclusions in all causes in which
these principles are involved. When we consult our
legal advisers, we feel perfect confidence, that they
will approach the subject without the slightest bias
from preconceived notions, and that, if they do not
agree in their opinion, the disagreement will be the
result, not of any conflicting doctrines, to which on
one side or other they were previously pledged, but
simply to a natural, unavoidable disparity in the
capacity or conformation of their minds. I hardly
need observe how far otherwise the case stands with
regard to theology and its teachers ; how exceedingly
rare and difficult it is for any of them to keep aloof
from the schools and parties into which the Church
is parcelled, and not to be, whether consciously or
unconsciously, swayed by their influence in his views
of Church questions, and the more in proportion to
his earnestness and his sense of the sacredness of
the subject. Probably there were few clergymen
whose opinion on the Gorham Case might not have
been safely predicted by any one who knew the
school to which he belonged ; and the bishops who
sat on the appeal, were certainly not an exception to
this remark. The importance and interest of the case
turned upon the fact, that the individual defendant
was the representative of a strong party, whose
position in the Church would have been shaken
and imperilled, if his doctrine had been condemned.

Hence the composition of a purely ecclesiastial
tribunal, to be substituted for the present Court of
Appeal in causes of heresy, is a problem beset with
such complicated difficulties, as to render it almost
hopeless that any scheme will ever be devised for its
solution, which would give general satisfaction ;

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

even if there were not so many who would reject it
for the very reason, that it appears to recognize a
principle — the mystical prerogative of the clergy —
which they reject as groundless and mischievous.
If the Spiritualty is to have the final and exclusive
cognizance of such causes, it becomes necessary to
inquire, Who are the Spiritualty ? And the answer
to this question will be found to involve most per-
plexing difficulties both in theory and practice. By
the proper meaning of the word, the Spiritualty
would include all spiritual persons of every Holy
Order. But as, according to the high sacerdotal
view, the laity is for all purposes concerning the
declaration of doctrine merged in the Spiritualty,
so by some who most zealously maintain that view,
the lower orders of the Spiritualty are for the like
purposes held to be merged in the Episcopate, as
invested with the fulness of Apostolical authority.
It cannot be denied that this opinion may claim the
sanction of antiquity, and of the whole history of
Councils from the earliest to the latest times. But
our own Church presents an exception to the general
rule in the constitution of its Synods, in which the
clergy of the second Order form an essential element.
They, however, are only elect representatives of the
body to which they belong, and by a fiction, which,
however convenient, seems to be purely arbitrary,
the third Order of the Ministry is for this purpose
regarded as merged in the second. But though our
two Convocations do legally, however imperfectly,
represent our own branch of the Church, it does not
appear on what principle either the Irish or any
other branches of the Church can be rightly excluded
from a share in deliberations which affect the
.common faith. At present there are no means of

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

assembling even a National Synod. A Synod of the
whole English Communion, which has been recently
proposed, would require machinery which it would
be still more difficult to frame and to work, and it
would be still more doubtful whether, as long as the
relations of our Church to the State subsist, suck a
Synod could answer the purpose for which it appears
to be designed.

But in this matter we are forced at every turn to
choose between equal and irreconcilable difficulties.
The larger and more comprehensive the Synod which
may be brought together, at whatever cost, the more
adequately will it represent, if not the Church, at
least the Spiritualty. But in proportion as its
numbers adapt it to this object, and so give the
greater weight to its decisions, do they tend to unfit
it for the discussion of controverted points of doc-
trine, and so detract from its authority. On the
other hand, the smaller the body which meets for
deliberation, so much the better, no doubt, will it be
suited for the full ventilation of the matters in dis-
pute ; but in the same degree it will be liable to sus-
picions of partizanship and prepossession, and will
appear incapable of becoming the organ of the whole
Church for the declaration of its faith. Even so
small a body as the whole English Episcopate, has
been thought too unwieldy for a theological dis-
cussion, while every selection from it has been gene-
rally condemned, as inconsistent with public confi-
dence in its impartiality. It will also have to be
considered whether, when the faith of the Church is
at stake, it is possible to dispense with absolute
unanimity among those by whom it is to be deter-
mined ; or, if the vote of the majority is to prevail,
whether the minority must not be held to stand self-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

convicted of heresy, and if they refuse to recant, be
excommunicated. This indeed would raise no diffi-
culty in a Church unconnected with the State ; but
under the present mutual relations of Church and
State, such a proceeding would be as ineffectual, as
for one Bishop to excommunicate another of a dif-
ferent school, and, as a means of checking the
growth of heresy, would be merely futile, and expose
itself to derision.

These objections are equally applicable to the
second of the two proposals we are considering,
that of retaining the present Court of Appeal, under
the condition of referring all questions of doctrine
which come before it, to an ecclesiastical council,
which remains to be constituted. For the issue sent
by the Judicial Committee would be just as grave, as
if the cause had been originally brought under the
cognizance of the Spiritualty. Yet it seems pretty
clear that of the two this is the plan which has most
voices on its side, and is commonly thought to look
most like a practicable measure. But if I am not
mistaken, there is another difficulty on which this
project also must split. Either the lay judges must
be governed by the decision of their spiritual re-
ferees, or, after receiving the answer to their ques-
tion, they will be still at liberty to exercise their own
judgment on the whole case. That the members of
the Judicial Committee would ever consent, or be
permitted, to renounce their supreme jurisdiction,
and exchange their judicial functions in this behalf
for a purely ministerial agency, by which they will
have passively to accept, and simply to carry into
effect, the decisions of a Clerical Council — this is
something which I believe is no longer imagined to
be possible, even by the most ardent and sanguine

OP THE DIOCESE OP ST. DAVIDS. 63

advocate of what he calls the inalienable rights of
the clergy, so long as the Church remains in union
with the State on the present terms of the alliance.
But if they do not take up this subordinate position,
the principle of the ecclesiastical prerogative in mat-
ters of doctrine, which to those who maintain it is
probably more precious than any particular applica-
tion of it, is abandoned and lost. The Church will,
in their language, continue to groan in “ galling
fetters,” and “ an ignominious bondage 3.” On the
other hand, if the Judicial Committee retains its
independence, and is not bound to adopt the opinion
of its clerical advisers, it is quite certain that it will
continue to act on the same principles and maxims
of interpretation by which it has been hitherto
guided, and will in every case test the answer it
receives by these principles, and not the principles
by the answer.

For my own part, I heartily rejoice that this is so.
I consider it as a ground for the deepest thankful-
ness, as one of the most precious privileges of the
Church of England, that principles which I believe to
be grounded in justice, equity, and common sense,
are still the rule of judgment in ecclesiastical causes.
I earnestly hope that she may not be deprived of
this blessing by the misguided zeal of some of her
friends, from whom, I believe, she has at present
more to fear than from the bitterest of her enemies.
The present constitution of the Court of Appeal is
essentially conservative in its operation. Every
radical change, such as those we have been con-
sidering, would be revolutionary and disruptive in
its tendency, if not in its immediate result. A wrong

3 Joyce, u. s. p. 220.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

decision of the Court, as it is now constituted, can
only affect the position of individuals in the Church,
but leaves the doctrine of the Church just where it
was ; for it only determines that certain writings
which have been impeached for heresy are or are
not consistent with that doctrine, as laid down in the
standards of the Church. But the very object of the
proposed reconstruction or reform of the Court, is
to enable an ecclesiastical council to pronounce a
Declaration of faith, which, if it is to be of any use
toward deciding the question in dispute, must be
something more than a mere repetition of the formu-
laries alleged to have been impugned, and will there-
fore be a new, more or less authoritative, definition
of doctrine; in other words, a new article of faith.
It will be this really, though, of course, its framers
will disclaim all intention of innovation, and will
assert that the doctrine which they declare is that
which the Church has held from the beginning;
just as the Pope maintains that his dogma of the
Immaculate Conception was a part of the original
Christian revelation, though its definition, as an
article of faith, was reserved for the nineteenth
century. I observed that the definition of doctrine
which might be put forth by our divines would be
more or less authoritative, and in this respect it
differs widely from that of the Papal dogma. No
member of the Homan Communion is at liberty to
question either the truth or the antiquity of the
newly-defined article of faith. But an Anglican
definition could not pretend to any such authority,
grounded on the attribute of infallibility. Its authority
would entirely depend on the reputation of its authors
for learning, ability, and impartiality, and according
to the degree in which they might be believed to

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

possess these qualities, might be great, little, or
null.

Another subject closely connected with the fore-
going, and which on that account claims a brief
notice, is the reform of Convocation, which has been
lately proposed and advocated with much earnest-
ness. No doubt, in one point of view, this is a
question of the gravest importance. If the Convo-
cation of the Province of Canterbury is, either by
itself, or in conjunction with other bodies, to be
invested with that judicial and legislative authority
in matters of doctrine which some contend for as the
inherent, inalienable, and exclusive right of the
Spiritualty, it is most important that it should be so
organized as to afford as full and fair a representation
of the clergy as possible, and the remedying of any
defect in its constitution would be an object on
which no amount of thought or pains would be ill-
bestowed. But for any purposes which lie within
the present range of its powers and duties, it appears
to be perfectly adequate, and not to need any change.
It is now, I believe, as much as it could be made by
any new arrangement, a trustworthy organ for
giving utterance to the views of the clergy of the
province on Church questions. There is, probably,
no shade of opinion among them which it does not
reflect. And I think no one would say that, if it
were differently constituted, it would be likely to
contain a greater proportion of learned and able
men, the ornaments and strength of our Church.
And I must take this occasion to own that I cannot
at all concur with those who, either with friendly or
unfriendly motives, speak of Convocation, some with
bitter sarcasm, others in a milder tone of contempt,
because its proceedings are almost entirely confined

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

to discussion, and so rarely terminate in any kind of
action. I am not at all sure that this is an evil or a
loss. It does not in the least prove that the discus-
sion is useless ; and if it is in any way profitable, the
profit is clear, and not counterbalanced by any dis-
advantage. Not only have both the Debates, and
many of the Reports of Committees appointed from
time to time on questions generally interesting to
Churchmen, a permanent value as exponents of
opinion and results of laborious inquiry, but I cannot
doubt that they exert a powerful and generally bene-
ficial influence on the mind of the Church. And this
is a purely spiritual influence, without the slightest
intermixture of physical force or secular authority,
working solely in the way of argument and persuasion
on free judgments. It is, therefore, that which emi-
nently befits a spiritual body, and it seems strange
to hear this very spirituality of its operations treated
as a mark of impotence, which deprives it of all title
to respect even in the eyes of spiritual persons.
While, therefore, I can easily understand that an
extension of the ecclesiastical franchise may be de-
sired by many, simply on account of the value they
set on it, without any ulterior object, and can so far
sympathize with their wishes, I cannot regard this
as an object in which the Church has any practical
interest, and am quite content with the existing
state of the representation^ But so far as the demand
for a reform of Convocation proceeds upon the sup-
position that, by some change in its constitution, it
may be fitted for some enlargement of its powers,
and for some kind of work, which it is not now
permitted to undertake, I consider the efforts made
for this object as futile and mischievous : futile,
because they can only issue in disappointment ;

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

mischievous, because, however undesignedly on the
part of those who are engaged in them, they con-
tribute to spread and to heighten an agitation which
seems to me fraught with serious and growing
danger. I feel myself bound to speak out plainly on
this subject, though I know that the warning, in
proportion as it is needed, is the more likely to be
neglected.

The various projects we have been reviewing —
Diocesan Synods, General Councils, change in the
Court of Appeal, Reform of Convocation — however
independent of one another they may appear in their
origin, are really parts of one movement, and are
directed toward a common object ; and, when we
bring them together, so that they may throw light
on each other, it seems impossible to doubt what
that object is. It is evidently to recover the position
in which the Church, as identified with the Spiritu-
alty, stood before the Reformation, in the period
to which so many of our clergy are looking back
with fond regret, as to a golden age which, if it were
permitted to man to roll back the stream of time,
and to reverse the course of nature and the order of
Providence, they would gladly restore. It matters
nothing how many or how few of those who are
furthering this movement are conscious of its ten-
dency ; if wholly unsuspicious, they would not be
the less efficient instruments in the hands of those
who see further, and with a more definite purpose.
But the present union between Church and State, a
union in which, happily, the Church is not identified
with the Spiritualty, opposes an insurmountable
obstacle to the attainment of this object. Pew,
probably, even among the leaders of this movement,
desire to see this obstacle removed by a rupture and

e 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

separation between tbe two parties. But there may-
be some wlio indulge a hope that, by continued
agitation, they will be able to bring about a modifi-
cation of the terms of the union according to their
wishes, so as to free the clergy from the control of
the State in ecclesiastical matters, while they retain
all the advantages which they derive from its protec-
tion and support. Buoyed up with this hope, they
may use very strong language, and urge their fol-
lowers into very rash counsels, in the belief that,
even if they fail in their attempt, something may
be gained, and no harm be done. But, as I just
now observed, such agitation is not harmless because
it is impotent and useless. It is not a light evil that
men should be taught to consider themselves as
living in “ galling fetters 5 5 and an “ ignominious bon-
dage,’’ if this is not a true description of their real
condition. But those who have been so taught, if
they are conscientious and honourable men, will not
be content to sit down and weep, but will strive with
all their might to break their fetters and to regain
their freedom. And it will be impossible for them,
even with the example of their guides before them,
long to forget that, after all, these fetters are self-
imposed, and this bondage a state of their own choice;
that they have only to will, and their chains will drop
off, and their prison doors fly open. And while their
old friends and fellow- sufferers are painting the
misery and degradation of their house of bondage,
and urging them to efforts for deliverance which
experience proves to be utterly hopeless, there are
voices enough on the outside, appealing to their
sense of duty and of honour, bidding them to
come forth, and inviting them to take refuge
in that happy country where, among other bless-

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 69

ings, the Church is not confounded with the
people, and her freedom is well understood to
mean the rule of the clergy, culminating in the
absolute power of the Pope. This, however, is not
the only alternative. If old associations, or strong
convictions should prevent them from going forth in
that direction, they may find room nearer at hand
for a new Church, in which they may enjoy the
shelter without the control of the State, and may
both prescribe any terms of communion they may
think fit, and enforce the observance of them by any
course of proceeding which may seem best suited to
the purpose of suppressing all variations of private
opinion as to the sense in which they are to be
interpreted.

There are persons who may be attracted by the
spectacle now exhibited by one of our Colonial
Churches, which has found itself on a sudden, without
any effort of its own, severed from the State, and in
full enjoyment of that independence which is so much
coveted by some among ourselves. I think that its
example holds out a very precious and seasonable
warning. The unexpected release from the 44 galling
fetters,” and 44 ignominious bondage ” of the Royal
Supremacy, was unhappily accompanied by a no less
complete emancipation from the rules and principles
of English law and justice. The result showed how
dangerous it would be to entrust a purely ecclesi-
astical tribunal with the administration of justice in
ecclesiastical causes : how surely the divine would
get the better of the judge : how easily the most up-
right and conscientious men might be betrayed by
their zeal for truth, into the most violent and arbi-
trary proceedings ; exercising an usurped jurisdiction
by the mockery of a trial, in which the party accused

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

was assumed to acknowledge the jurisdiction 4 against
which he protested, and was condemned in his
absence, not for contumacy, but upon charges and
speeches which had the advantage of being heard
without a reply, though it was admitted by the pre-
siding judge that they referred to passages which
“ he had often felt to be obscure,” and which exposed
him to the “ risk of misunderstanding, and conse-
quently misrepresenting the defendant’s views 5.”

4 Trial of the Bishop of Natal for erroneous teaching, p. 340.
The Bishop of Capetown founds his claim to spiritual jurisdiction
on the alleged fact, of which he thinks “ there can be no doubt,”
that “ the Church, after long and careful deliberation, resolved
upon the appointment of Metropolitans over Colonial Churches,
and sent him out in that capacity the body dignified with the
name of the Church being a private company of Bishops, who
recommended the appointment to the ministers of the Crown.

5 P. 343 : “ A letter written two years ago, and the preface
to which he refers me, very inadequately represents the kind of
reply which doubtless he would have made to the charges which
have been brought against him, and to the speeches of the pre-
senting clergy.” One of these, the Bean of Capetown, had ob-
served, that the letter read had been put in by the Bishop of Natal,
“ in some degree as his defence.” And it was the whole that ac-
companied the protest. The real nature of the proceeding is can-
didly stated in the Guardian of July 4, 1866 : “ If the resolution
(of the Upper House of Convocation) were to he construed as
declaring that Bishop Colenso has been regularly deposed or de-
prived by any tribunal or proceeding known to Church law, it
would assert more probably than could be proved — more certainly
than has been proved, either in Convocation or out of it. But
that Bishop Colenso’s teaching is, as a matter of fact, dangerous
and unsound to the extent of heresy — that he is a person clearly
unfit to have the spiritual oversight of Churchmen in Natal, and
that some one else ought to have that oversight ; that the South
African Church, there being apparently no regular jurisdiction any-
where competent to try and to depose him, has, regularly or irre-
gularly, condemned and rejected him in such way as it could ; and
that we ought for the sake of the faith to stand by the South
African Church in this matter, though we may not approve all the
grounds of the decision — these are propositions in which the great

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

This, though instructive, is melancholy enough : but
it is still more saddening to think that such proceed-
ings should have been defended by some among our-
selves as a fair trial : though I am persuaded that this
could not have happened, if the party in whose case
justice was so outraged, had been less generally
obnoxious, and I have no doubt that if the offence
with which he was charged, had been one of a differ-
ent kind — such, for instance, as the holding all
Roman doctrine — the same proceedings would have
appeared to the same persons in their true light, as
an intolerable wrong. But I believe there are many
who will learn from this example of the fruits of
sacerdotal independence, among which might be
numbered the danger of a permanent schism, better
to appreciate the blessings we enjoy in the institu-
tions under which we live, notwithstanding the
opprobrious names cast upon them by some who
rest and ruminate under their shade. One thing at
least appears to me absolutely certain : that, if there
had been previously any prospect of obtaining such a
reconstruction of the Court of Appeal as would,
either formally or virtually, transfer its jurisdiction
to the clergy, that prospect would now be closed for
ever.

There is indeed an unmistakable indication that
the general tendency of our time does not set in that
direction, but in quite another, in the Clerical Sub-
scription Act of last year. That the Report on which

mass of English Churchmen would certainly agree.” These last
words may be too true. But such a view of duty involves the
principle that the end sanctifies the means, and may be pleaded for
every coup d'etat. Violence openly avowed is less pernicious than
when it puts on the mask of justice, and claims the sanction of
religion.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

that measure was founded, should have obtained the
unanimous concurrence of so large a number of
persons as composed the Royal Commission, repre-
senting every party in the Church, is one of the most
remarkable and the most auspicious events of our
day. It marks the crowning result of a reaction,
that of Christian wisdom and charity against the spirit
and the policy which dictated the Act of Uniformity,
passed amidst the narrow views and evil passions of
the Restoration. The declared object of the new
Act was to relieve tender consciences, by the altera-
tion of forms which were designed to be as exclusive
as possible, and which have no doubt excluded many
from the ministry of the Church, and have perplexed
and distressed many more within it. The principle
of subscription is preserved, but its terms are so
modified as to allow a much larger range to the free-
dom of private opinion. This range indeed, is not,
and, consistently with the general intention of the
Act, could not be exactly defined. The stress is laid
not so much on the subscription itself, as on the
character of the formularies, to which the subscrip-
tion is required, and which the subscriber is to use
in his public ministrations. It was thought that,
from conscientious men, this was sufficient security ;
while with others more explicit language would be of
no avail. I consider this as not only a generous, but
a just and wise confidence, and one certainly not
more likely to be abused than the old jealousy to
defeat its own purpose. But I think that it does
tend to increase the difficulty of prosecutions for
heresy, and to lessen their chances of success.
Whether this is a consequence to be dreaded, or may
not be the happiest settlement of the question about
the Court of Appeal, I will not now stay to inquire.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

But I believe that, whether good or evil, it was not
unforeseen or undesigned 6.

It now only remains for me to state my views on
the subject which for the last twelve months has
occupied more of the attention of the Church than
any other, and has been discussed with an earnest-
ness and warmth which, while they show the deep
interest it has excited in many minds, and so at least
its relative importance, should admonish all who have
to deal with it, of the great need of approaching it
calmly and soberly, and as much as possible free from
prejudice and passion. And to this end it is not
enough that we should weigh arguments which may
be opposed to our own preconceived opinions, with
an even mind, unless we also try to place ourselves
as far as we can in the point of view from which they
proceed, and in some measure to enter into the feel-
ings with which they are urged. You will have
understood me to be speaking of that which for
shortness I may call the Ritual question : and I trust
that in the observations I am about to make on it,
I shall not lose sight of the rule I have just laid
down, and that whatever I shall say may tend to
promote the common interests of truth, peace, and
charity. And first a word as to the importance of
the question. A relative importance, as I have
observed, cannot be denied to a controversy by which
the minds of Churchmen have been largely and deeply
stirred. But I entirely differ from those who regard
the dispute as in itself of little moment, and unworthy
of serious attention, because it relates immediately
to things so trifling as the form and colour of gar-

9 See the debate in the House of Commons on June 9, 18G3,
upon Clerical Subscription.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

ments to be worn, and ceremonies to be observed, in
Divine service. No doubt these are things indifferent
in themselves, always subject to the authority of the
Church, and deriving all their importance from the
degree in which they minister to the use of edifying.
But they would not be decreed by the Church, if
they were supposed to be utterly unmeaning : and
the meaning which they are intended to convey may
be of the gravest moment. And whether they do or
do not serve the end of edification, is surely a ques-
tion in which the well being, not to say the life of the
Church, is deeply concerned. At the very lowest
estimate, no man of practical sense can deem it a
light matter, if a change is made in the externals of
public worship, such as to give a new aspect to the
whole. Such a transformation must needs be the
effect of some powerful cause, and the cause of some
important effect. Nothing less than the future
character and destiny of the Church of England may
be involved in the issue of the movement now in
progress.

I must also say a word on its past history, as
this has been strangely misunderstood. It has been
suggested, in the way of apology for those who might
be thought to be advancing too far in this direction,
that the recent development of Ritualism is intended
as a pious protest against recent innovations in doc-
trine, which are injurious to our Lord’s Divine dig-
nity. But this explanation, while it implies an
unmerited imputation on the orthodoxy of the great
body of the clergy who have declined to take part in
this protest , also involves a very gross anachronism.
Nearly five and twenty years ago, Mr. Robertson
opened his very useful treatise, “ How shall we con-
form to the Liturgy ? ” with these words : “ Among

or THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVIDS.

the consequences of the late theological movement
(meaning that which had been some years before in-
augurated at Oxford, and was then in full swing) has
been the manifestation of a feeling more energetic at
least, if not stronger, than any that had before been
general, as to the obligations of the clergy in matters
of ritual observance. We hear daily of the revival of
practices, which from long disuse have come now to
be regarded as novelties.” This revival continued to
make its way; and in 1851 had gone so far that
twenty-four Archbishops and Bishops of the two
Provinces concurred in an Address to the clergy of
their respective Dioceses, which began with the state-
ment : — “ We have viewed with the deepest anxiety
the troubles, suspicions, and discontents which have
of late in some parishes accompanied the introduction
of ritual observances exceeding those in common use
amongst us.” Whether this Address produced any
effect on those whom it was intended to restrain, I
am not able to say. There were causes enough in
the troubles and discontents of which it speaks,
though not to stop, to retard the progress of the
movement, and keep it within bounds : and it
is not at all surprising that it should not sooner
have reached the point at which it has now arrived.
Its present phase does not in the least require or
justify the conjecture of any new motives peculiar to
our day ; nor is that conjecture warranted by the
professions of the Ritualists themselves, who are too
conscious of their own history to advance such a plea,
and too well satisfied with the grounds which they
have alleged for their proceedings to feel that they
need it.

Among these grounds that which used to be most

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

strongly insisted on, was the lawfulness of the ob-
servances introduced. It was contended that though,
in consequence of their long disuse, they presented
the appearance of novelty, they were really part and
parcel of the law of the land and of the Church,
which had never been repealed, though, either
through the fault of men or the misfortune of evil
times, it had been neglected and disobeyed. It
followed that those who revived these confessedly
obsolete observances show themselves to be the
true, loyal, and dutiful sons of the Church, and that
those of their brethren who adhere to the long
prevailing usage, though their conduct may admit
of some charitable excuse, cannot be altogether free
from blame. This is a position in which the great
body of the clergy can hardly be prepared con-
tentedly to acquiesce, and so the legal side of the
question interests the character and the conscience
of every parish priest in the country. It cannot be
sufficient for him to be treated with indulgence by
those who regard him as really guilty of a breach
of duty. But though I do not expect that those
who have taken this high ground will ever retract
their language, I do not think it will continue to be
repeated with the same inward confidence ; as it must
be felt that, to say the least, the assumption on
which it rests has within the last half year suffered a
somewhat rude shock and lost much of its credit.
Several of the Bishops, a majority of the English
Bench, thought that the state of things rendered
it desirable to obtain a legal opinion on the lawful-
ness of some of the restored observances, and by
their direction a Case very carefully prepared was
submitted to four lawyers of the highest reputation,

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

including one who was then Attorney- General. The
joint Opinion of these eminent persons pronounced
the practices in question to be unlawful.

It was to have been expected that those who would
have rejoiced if the answer had been in the opposite
sense, should have been displeased and dissatisfied
with this result. But I was not prepared to find
that any one not pledged to their views would
permit himself to decry the value of the opinion, on
the ground that the Case was “ of an ex-jparte
character,” and that the counsel consulted fell into a
“trap” which had been laid for them7. I refrain
from all comment on the good taste of this language
and on the reflection it implies on the character of
the consulting Bishops, and on the learning and
ability of their legal advisers. I will only observe
that the infatuation thus indirectly but unmistak-
ably imputed to the Bishops, is even greater than
the disingenuousness with which they are charged.
For if any one had a deep personal interest in ascer-
taining the real state of the law on the subject, it
must have been those who might find themselves
compelled to bring the question into Court at their
own charge and risk. They are supposed t3 have
craftily contrived the defeat of their own object, by
laying a “ trap ” into which their guides, whom they
had carefully blinded, innocently but inevitably fell.
In the meanwhile, however successful one who is
not a member of the legal profession, may believe
himself to have been, in convicting four lawyers of
the first eminence, and acting under the gravest
responsibility, of ignorance or carelessness, without

7 See the speech of the Dean of Ely, in the debate on Ritual, in
the Lower House of Convocation.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

the possibility of knowing the steps by which they
were brought to their conclusion, it is satisfactory
to reflect that, as far as I am aware, no one has
ventured to throw out a suspicion that they were
under the influence of any bias arising from personal
feelings ; as it is notorious that if any such had
existed it would have been likely to operate rather
against their conclusion than in its favour ; nor do I
know that any one has yet attempted to show that
the case submitted to them either omitted or mis-
stated any material fact or element of a judicial
decision.

It has indeed been suggested that 'the persons
whom it would have been proper to consult were
those who are profoundly versed in what is called
the science of Liturgiology. This would no doubt
have been the right course if the object had been
that which has been attributed to the Bishops, to
procure a sanction for foregone conclusions. But if
it was to obtain a thoroughly unprejudiced as well
as enlightened opinion, no course could have been
less judicious. Some of the most distinguished pro-
fessors of the new science have made it clear that,
even if they professed the requisite impartiality in
which they are so glaringly deficient, they would be
very unsafe guides, not only in questions of law, but
even in such as are immediately connected with their
own special study, the tendency of which appears to
be to develope the imagination at the expense of the
judgment 8.

8 On Dr. Littledale’s notable discovery, unhappily endorsed by
Archdeacon Freeman, about the north side of the altar, see a
pamphlet, “ The North Side of the Table,” by Henry Richmond
Droop, M.A., Barrister, and one with the same title by the Rev.
Charles John Elliott. On Archdeacon Freeman’s own not less

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

One advantage, not as it appears to me incon-
siderable, will have been gained by the Opinion,
whatever else may be its result. Until it shall have
been overruled by the Judgment of a competent
tribunal, it may be hoped that no Ritualist will again
reproach any of his brethren with unfaithfulness or
wilfulness, because they abstain from observances

notable discovery as to weekly celebrations, see a Letter to the
Archdeacon by the Rev. R. H. Eortescue. The extravagant licence
of arbitrary conjecture and assumption in which Ritualist writers
indulge when they have a point to make out, is a very evil sign,
whether as indicating weakness of judgment or violence of party
spirit : or, as is most probable, both at once. With its help, St.
Paul’s <j>e\ovr) (2 Tim. iv. 13) becomes a “ sacrificial vestment.’*
The lights in the upper chamber (Acts xx. 8) which were burning
while he preached, were manifestly designed to pay honour to the
Holy Eucharist. The direction ascribed to St. James, in the forged
Apostolical Constitution (viii. 12), for the dp^iepeus to officiate
\a/x7rpav io-Orjra /xere vSvs, is deemed conclusive as to the sacerdotal
character of the vestment ; though the real Apostle speaks (ii. 2)
of a rich man coming into the Christian assembly iv eaOrjTL Xa/xTrpa,
apparently not for the purpose of “ celebrating.” Still more
seriously shocking is the abuse made of the Old Testament and of
the Book of Revelation. Cardinal Baronius was not guilty of a
worse outrage on truth and common sense, when he pretended to
discover that our Lord robed Himself for the celebration of the Last
Supper ( Annales , tom. i. p. 154). Casaubon’s rebuke (Exercita-
tiones, p. 439) is, as to the abuse of Scripture, equally applicable to
the Cardinal’s modern imitators : “ Quis ferat Baronii licentiam, hie
quoque fingentis Dominum nostrum ad instituendam Sacrosanctam
Eucharistiam pretiosam aliam vestem induisse, et pro actionibus
vestimenta subinde mutasse ! Hoccine est divina oracula cum
timore et tremore tractare, humana figmenta sacris narrationibus
ex suo semper immiscere?” The next remark shows that Baro-
nius was more excusable than those who tread in his steps :
“Enimvero non poterat continere se Cardinalis Baronius, vel
Cardinalities certe jam turn animos gerens, aulse Romanse splen-
dori et regise Pontificum pompse assuetus, quin aliquid de moribus
hodiernis Domino affingeret.” — To the above cited pamphlets may
now be added an excellent article on the North Side of the Lord’s
Table, in the Contemporary Review, Oct. 1866.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

which eminent lawyers believe to be unlawful. But
I am quite aware that the opinion by no means sets
the question at rest, and though I should be sur-
prised if it was to be judicially contradicted, I am
fully sensible of the possibility that the more
thorough sifting of a trial may lead to an opposite
conclusion. That the question in its legal aspect is
one of very great difficulty will not be denied by any
one who is at all acquainted with the voluminous
discussion it has undergone. I will only venture to
make one observation, which seems to lie fairly
within my province, on the peculiar character of the
difficulty. It is one of a kind which we have con-
stantly to encounter in the highest regions of theo-
logy, when we find two truths — such as God’s
sovereignty and man’s free agency — both undeniable,
yet apparently irreconcilable with one another. In
the present case we have, on the one side, a Rubric
still in force, which prescribes the use of certain
ornaments in the Church by the authority of Parlia-
ment. On the other side, we have the uniform
practice of three centuries, during which these
ornaments have never been in use. Both facts are
unquestionable, the difficulty is to find an explanation
by which they may be reconciled. Such an explana-
tion has been thought to be furnished by subsequent
acts of Royal authority which, if valid, would qualify
the Rubric, and even, if not, would sufficiently account
for the practice. But why the Rubric was allowed to
remain at the last revision of the Prayer Book in
1662, without either modification or explanation, is
another difficulty which has been bequeathed to us
by the Bishops of that day. I am afraid that it
admits of a but too easy solution. When at the
Savoy Conference the Ministers excepted to the

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

Rubric on the ground that “it seemed to bring
back” the vestments forbidden by the Second Prayer
Book of Edward VI., the Bishops might either have
admitted that they desired to see these ornaments
restored, or have shown that the Rubric under the
law as it then stood would not have that effect.
They did neither the one nor the other, but simply
declared that they “ thought it fit that the Rubric
continue as it is,” for reasons which they had already
given in answer to a more general remonstrance of
the ministers on the subject of ceremonies. But
when we refer to these reasons, we find that they
relate to no other kind of vestment than the surplice.

The Bishops of the Restoration may deserve cen-
sure for some parts of their conduct in that contro-
versy. Not that they were more intolerant than
their adversaries, but it was their misfortune to have
gained the power, where the others only retained
the will to persecute. But, without wishing at all
to extenuate their faults, I think we have no right,
morally or historically, to put the worst construction
on their words or actions, when they may be at least
equally well explained on a milder supposition. If,
when they gave that answer to the exception of the
ministers, they believed that the Rubric did really
authorize the use of the vestments which “ it seemed
to bring back,” they would have been guilty of the
most odious duplicity. But if, knowing or believing
that it had been so limited as only to cover the use
of the surplice, they nevertheless retained it unaltered,
just because their opponents “ desired that it might
be wholly left out,” this I am afraid would be too
much in keeping with the general course and spirit
of their proceedings, to be thought at all improbable.
It must, however, be observed that though on this

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

supposition they were witnessing, as some of them
did still more plainly by their subsequent acts, to
the general understanding as to the state of the law
on this head, it would not follow with absolute
certainty that they were not under a mistake, and
that the apprehension professed by the Puritans was
not better grounded than they themselves believed.

Independently of whatever weight may be due to
the recent Opinion, I think there was at least enough
of obscurity and perplexity in the question, to re-
strain a cautious and modest man who had studied
its history, even from making up his mind upon it
with absolute confidence9, much more from acting
upon his private opinion by the revival of obsolete
observances. The use of three centuries may not be
sufficient to prove the state of the law, but it can
hardly be denied that it affords a strong indication of
the mind of the Church, which it seems hardly con-
sistent with either humility or charity for any of her
ministers openly to disregard. But maxims of con-
duct which would govern ordinary cases may not be
applicable to this. We are bound to judge men by
the view they take of their own position and duties,
however erroneous it may appear to us. And it
is clear that the clergymen who are engaged in the

9 I venture to express this opinion, notwithstanding the high
authority cited by Mr. Stephens (Book of Common Prayer with
Notes, vol. i. p. 378), because I find that in that quotation a most
material part of the history of the question was entirely ignored ;
as it is, most surprisingly, by Archdeacon Law, in his lecture on
Extreme Ritualism, where, through this singular oversight, he finds
himself driven (p. 124) to a conclusion most repugnant to his
wishes. Mr. Stephens himself seems to me to beg the whole ques-
tion, in his answer to the observations which he quotes from
Bishop Mant, on the limitation effected in the Rubric of Elizabeth
by the Advertisements and Articles of 1571 (p. 3G8)...

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

Ritualistic movement do not consider themselves
simply as ministers of tlie Church of England, but as
providentially charged with a missionary work of
restoration and renewal, which they conceive to be
urgently needed for her welfare1. The changes
which have been introduced into the forms of public
worship are a part only, though the most con-
spicuous, and perhaps the most important part of
that work. In their eyes that usage of three cen-
turies, to which they are called upon to conform,
whether legal or not, has no claim to respect, but,
on the contrary, is a corruption and an abuse. When
they look back to its origin, they can feel no sym-
pathy with the spirit from which it sprang. When
they follow the stream of its history, they observe
signs of progressive deterioration. And when
they test it by its final results, they find on the
whole failure and not success. The present state
of things appears to them such as to warrant all
lawful endeavours to try the effect of a different
system. If the tendency of that which they advo-
cate is to lessen the amount of difference in externals^
which separates the English Church from the greater
part of Christendom, they do not regard that as a
ground of objection, but as an argument in its
favour; and more especially with respect to our
Missions to the heathen, as an incalculable advantage,
supplying a defect which would be alone sufficient to
account for their comparative barrenness.

Whatever we may think of the past, I am afraid
that no one who does not shut his eyes to facts of
the most glaring notoriety, can deny that this view

1 See Dr, Littledale on “ The Missionary Aspect of Ritualism,”
in u The Church and the World.”

F 2

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

of the present is but too well founded, and that
the state of the Church with regard to the influence
which she exercises on the people of this country is
far from satisfactory. This indeed would be abun-
dantly evident if it were only from the proposals
and attempts which have been so rife of late years
for supplying the acknowledged want. They show
indeed that the Church is awake to the consciousness
of her need, and bestirring herself to provide for it ;
but also that the means of so doing have not yet
been found, at least in any degree adequate to the
end. And I think this ought to make us very
cautious about rejecting any help which may be
offered to us for this object, unless it be quite clear
that it is offered on terms which we cannot lawfully
accept. I do not mean now to speak of the difficulty
of reaching vast masses of our population on whom
the Church has at present no hold at all, and who
have to be recovered from a state often much worse
than most forms of heathenism. That would only
divert our attention from the subject immediately
before us. Those who never enter our churches
because they are strangers to all religion, can have
no concern in a question about modes of worship.
But confining ourselves to this point, we can hardly
fail to see clear signs of a wide-spread feeling that
something is wanting in the ordinary services of the
Church to make them generally attractive or im-
pressive. Otherwise we should not hear so many
complaints of their length and tediousness. And we
cannot overlook the fact, that the outward posture
and most probably the inward frame of perhaps the
great bulk of our congregations, is not that of
worshippers who are joining in common prayer, but
that of persons listening, respectfully or otherwise,

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

to some devotional utterances wliicli pass between
tlie minister and the clerk, while waiting for the
sermon, as the only part of the service from which
they expect any benefit. It is natural that many
should wish to have this time of waiting abridged.
But, on the other hand, we hear not less loud
complaints of the length and tediousness of sermons,
and wishes that they should be either reserved for
special occasions, or kept within a much narrower
compass.

It is not enough, by way of answer, to point to
the crowds which frequent the special services of our
cathedrals, as a proof that we may well be content
with the present attractiveness of our form of wor-
ship. N o doubt as often as it combines the attrac-
tions of a majestic building, a well-trained choir, and
an eloquent preacher, it will never lack the attendance
of large congregations. But it is very rarely that
any of these are to be found, much more rarely that
all are to be found together, in our parish churches.
The example, however, shows what are the elements
which contribute to the result : and experience ap-
pears to prove that they may be sufficiently effica-
cious even when present in only a moderate degree.
The character and internal arrangements of the
building, though of subordinate moment, are by no
means unimportant ; and every indication of wilful,
irreverent neglect, in things appropriated to the most
sacred uses, can hardly fail to injure those whom it
does not offend. But this at least it is always
possible to avoid. A high strain of eloquence can
never be common : nor perhaps is it suited to
most of our congregations. But earnestness and
thoughtfulness, with the skill gained by experience
in adapting the discourse to the capacity and circum-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

stances of the hearers, will always enable the preacher
to awaken their interest, and command their atten-
tion. And so, if our ordinary Services are found
wearisome by those who do not bring with them a
lively spirit of devotion, this cannot be fairly laid to
the charge of the Prayer Book, where its directions
are disregarded, and the services are conducted in a
manner wholly at variance with the intention of its
framers, and deprived of all their proper charm of
variety and solemnity, by the practice which excludes
all musical expression, and makes the effect to depend
on the always uncertain, and often painfully defective
taste and judgment of the reader.

While therefore I would readily admit that which is
often urged in defence of the Ritualistic movement,
that in many of our churches there is large room for
improvement in the prevailing practice of our public
worship, I cannot find in this fact any thing to justify,
or indeed to account for the recent innovations. In
the first place the resources of the Prayer Book were
very far from exhausted. Experience, as far as it
went, tended to show that a closer observance of its
directions, and a fuller use of the means it places at our
disposal, without the smallest excess over that which
is perfectly legitimate and unquestionably authorized,
would commonly suffice to relieve our services from
that monotony which has been the subject of com-
plaint ; and which, allow me to remind you, my
reverend brethren, may be felt by many of our
hearers as very irksome and depressing, while we who
officiate are wholly unconscious of the effect we pro-
duce. And it must be added that, if there are con-
gregations to whom even such an amount of variation
from the established usage would be unwelcome, and
even offensive, that is, certainly a reason not for, but

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

against, the introduction of other changes, which are
generally obnoxious, not only from their novelty, but
their character. And in the next place it must be
observed, that these startling changes have been
made, not at a time when the Church had to be
roused from a state of apathy and torpor, but, on the
contrary, while she was exerting herself with unpre-
cedented activity for the removal of impediments,
and the strengthening of aids to the public devotion
of her children. I have already, at the beginning of
my Charge, touched on the evidence visible in this
Diocese, and still more in many others, of the grow-
ing attention paid to the structure and comeliness of
her sacred buildings : and this care has been very
largely extended to the details of her worship. If
any proof of this statement were needed as to our-
selves, it would be found in the gratifying fact, that
choral associations have been lately formed in three
of our Archdeaconries, whose example will no doubt
ere long be followed by the fourth. We have thus
ground to hope, that the voice of melody will be
more frequently heard in our churches, to inspirit
the strains of praise and thanksgiving, and that the
“ psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs,” which
were meant to be the expression of pious feelings,
will not always be made to serve merely as additional
lessons. In the meanwhile it is by no means certain
that the success, measured by increased attendance,
of the new observances, has been greater than that
of services which have been conducted strictly within
the commonly recognized limits of the Prayer Book,
and with an intelligent and judicious application of
its rules. I have no statistics which would enable
me to speak with confidence on this subject. But I
believe that in most neighbourhoods the number of

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

those who are attracted by the revived ritual bears a
small proportion to that of those who dislike and
disapprove of it, even if they are not shocked and
disgusted by it. And I strongly suspect that those
who take pleasure in it, do so mainly not on account
of its superior sensuous attractions, but because it
represents a peculiar system of opinions.

Hence it is clear that a comparison between the two
forms of worship, with respect to their effectiveness
or popularity, could lead to no trustworthy result,
and, even if it did, could afford no safe ground for
any practical decision. It is absolutely necessary
to consider the movement in itself, apart from all
calculations or conjectures as to its prospects of
success or failure. Much also has been said which
appears to me quite irrelevant, as to the personal
character of those who take the lead in it. They are
described, I have no doubt most truly, as men of
exemplary lives, and extraordinary devotedness to
their pastoral duties 2. These certainly are qualities
which entitle them to respect ; and that devotedness
may not be the less meritorious because they are
avowedly engaged in a missionary and proselytizing
work. But they themselves would probably be the
last to question that many, if not most, Roman
Catholic priests lead holy, self-denying lives, and give
themselves unsparingly to the work of their calling,
even when it is not of a missionary kind. It seems

2 So the Report of the Committee of the Lower House of Con-
vocation on Ritual. “ None are more earnest and unwearied in
delivering the truth of Christ’s Gospel, none more self-denying in
ministering to the wants and distresses of the poor, than very
many of those who have put in use these observances.” As the
Committee throughout ignore the Romanizing character of the
movement, it is not surprising that they should not have perceived
the irrelevancy of this remark.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID* Sw

to me more to tlie purpose to observe, tliat they are
apparently persons of great energy and no incon-
siderable ability, thoroughly in earnest, believing in
themselves and their mission, of resolute will and
sanguine hopes ; and that the strength of the party
behind their backs is not to be measured by the num-
bers of those who happen to belong to their congre-
gations. Their adherents probably form a much
larger body. It may not be too much to say, looking
at their connexions and alliances, that they are already
a power in the Church : one strong enough at least
to make it worth our while to gain as clear an idea
as we can of their principles and aims.

The fact which presents itself most obviously on
the surface of the whole matter, is the change which
has been made in the Administration of the Lord’s
Supper. The Communion Service of the Prayer
Book is set, as it were, in the frame of the Roman
Catholic ceremonial, with all the accompaniments of
the high or chanted Mass, vestments, lights, incense,
postures and gestures of the officiating clergy. It is
interpolated with corresponding hymns, and supple-
mented by private prayers, translated from the
Roman Missal. To make the resemblance more
complete, several of the clearest directions of our own
Rubric are disobeyed, and the Roman observance
substituted for that appointed by our Church 3. To
the eye, hardly any thing appears to be wanting for
an exact identity between the two Liturgies : and it
is but rarely that any difference can be detected by
the ear. I cannot help thinking that this unques-

3 This is most amply shown in a pamphlet entitled “ Utrum
Horum,” by Presbyter Anglicanus , where the directions of the
Prayer Book are compared with those of the “ Directorium Angli-

canum.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

tionable fact deserved some notice in the Report of
the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation
on Ritual, where it is passed over in silence, and
could not be gathered by any one from the remarks
which are there made on the particulars of the new
practice. And it is not unworthy of note, as indi-
cating the spirit of the movement, that according to
an interpretation of the Rubric referring to the second
year of Edward VI., which was for some time treated
as indisputable, every ornament and rite of the
unreformed Church, which has not been either
expressly forbidden or tacitly excluded by the esta-
blished order of our Service, is still authorized by the
Statute law, and may and ought to be used. This
doctrine was made the foundation of a remarkable
work, which purports to direct the Anglican clergy
in their liturgical ministrations, with a view to the
restoration of the old practice, and treats the subject
with a Rabbinical minuteness, quite worthy of the
end proposed4. This interpretation, indeed, has since
been discovered to be hardly tenable, though it will
probably not the less continue to be acted upon.
But it marks the precise character of the ideal which
the Ritualists have set before themselves, as the
object of their aspirations : the mediaeval type of
Ritual in its most florid development, and in the most
glaring possible contrast to the simplicity of our
present use.

This, I say, is a fact which, in my opinion, ought
not to be kept out of sight in any statement which
professes to give a clear and fair view of the subject,
especially if it is meant to be a guide to practical
conclusions. And it enables us the better to judge

* “ Directorium Anglicanum.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

of the argumentative value of some topics which are
often urged on behalf of the movement, and which
have even been deemed worthy of a place in the
Report I was just now speaking of. We cannot but
sympathize with persons who are governed by “ no
other motive than a desire to do honour to the Most
Holy and Undivided Trinity, and to render the
services of the English Church more becoming in
themselves and more attractive to the people.5 ’ But
it is not easy to perceive how these motives are
specially connected with the practices in defence of
which they are alleged ; and I think it would startle
and alarm most Churchmen to hear that, in the
judgment of either House of Convocation, wherever
these motives exist, they will of themselves, without
any other kind of impulse, naturally lead to the
closest possible assimilation of our Liturgy to the
Roman Mass. In this case the ruling motives can
be only matter of conjecture ; all that is certain is
the visible result. And this rather suggests a strong
suspicion, that the motives assigned would not have
taken this direction if it had not been determined
by a prepossession in favour of distinctive Roman
usages. It has also been laid down as a principle
bearing upon the present question, that the use of
peculiar vestments for the celebration of Divine
Service, and especially of its most solemn act, the
Holy Communion, is a dictate of instinctive piety 5.
Yet it may now be considered as well ascertained
that for several centuries the piety of the early Chris-
tians did not lead them to make any change in their
ordinary apparel, even for the celebration of their

6 See “ A Sermon for Easter Day,” by the Rev. Edward Stuart,
Appendix, p. 45.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

holiest mysteries, and that the liturgical vestments
of later ages may all be traced to the original dress of
common secular life6. But even if the principle could
claim that sanction of Christian antiquity which it
wants, and which seems rather to belong, in respect
both of shape and colour, to the much-despised sur-
plice 7, still, it would not either warrant or explain
the partiality shown in the adoption, not only of the
late mediaeval forms, but of the precise variations of
colour prescribed by the Roman Ritual.

These examples, however, convey a very imperfect
idea of the extent to which that partiality is carried,
and of the manifold ways in which it is displayed.
The Debate on Ritual in the Lower House of Convo-
cation drew forth some remarkable disclosures 8,
which leave no room for doubt on this head. I
confine myself, however, to that which is apparent
in the mode of conducting public worship. Where
we find such a close and studied approximation
to the Roman Catholic system in externals, it is
certainly not uncharitable to suspect that there may

6 Professor Hefele’s Essay on this subject in the second volume
of his “ Beitragezur Kirchengeschichte, Archaologie, und Liturgik”
— the more valuable as the work of a zealous as well as a very learned
Roman Catholic — has been made the foundation of a very useful
paper by the Rev. Professor Cheetham, in the “ Contemporary
Review,” August, 1866.

7 “ The clergy,” observes Mr. Hemans, in a paper on the Church
in the Catacombs, “ Contemporary Review,” October, 1866, “ till
the end of this primitive period, continued to officiate attired in the
classic white vestments common to Roman citizens, but distin-
guished by the long hair and beard of philosophers ; and not till
the Constantinian period did the bishops begin to wear purple ; not
till the ninth century was that primitive white costume (which
was sometimes slightly adorned in purple or gold) laid aside by the
priesthood generally.”

8 In a letter or paper read by Archdeacon Wordsworth.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

be a corresponding affinity in matters of faith and
doctrine. This becomes still more probable when
we place two facts side by side. On the one hand,
the Reformers, who desired to abolish the ornaments
and ceremonies now restored, had no aversion to
them in themselves, were not only fully aware that
in themselves they are things indifferent, but pro-
bably would have been ready to admit that they are
graceful, picturesque, attractive to the senses and
the imagination. But they disliked them the more
on that very account, because, in their minds, they
were things inseparably associated with doctrines
which they abhorred, and against which they con-
tended even to the death. On the other hand, those
who are labouring for the restoration of the pre-
Reformation Ritual, though they do not neglect to
avail themselves of such general pleas as I was just
now noticing, grounded on the common instincts
and cravings of human nature, when they come
distinctly to enumerate “ the ends to which Ritual
and Ceremonial minister,” specify as one end, that
“ they are the expressions of doctrine, and witnesses
to the Sacramental system of the Catholic religion9.”
It is of course on this account above all that these
things are valued by those who adopt them. These
earnest men would indignantly reject the supposition
that they are agitating the Church for any thing
which serves merely to gratify a refined taste, and
has not in their eyes a very deep doctrinal signifi-
cance. The question, therefore, is forced upon us :
Is the doctrine thus symbolized the doctrine of the
Reformed Church of England, which has dropped
these symbols, or that of the Church of Rome, which
retains them ?

9 “ Directorium Anglicanum,” Preface, p. xiv.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

There may be persons to whom it may appear
that this question admits but of one answer, that
of the latter alternative. This, however, evidently
depends on the further inquiry, Whether the doctrine
is one of those on which the two Churches are at
variance, or of those on which they agree with one
another. Now, however it may be as to doctrine in
the proper sense, I think it can hardly be denied that
there is a very wide and important difference between
the general view which our Church takes of her
Liturgy, and the Roman view of the Mass. The
difference is marked by their several names and
descriptions. The one is an Office for the Adminis-
tration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion ;
the other, for the celebration of a sacrifice. The
difference indicated by the titles is equally conspicuous
in the contents of the two Liturgies. In the Angli-
can, the idea which is almost exclusively predominant
is that of Communion. There is, indeed, an Offer-
tory, and an oblation of common things for sacred
and charitable uses. There is mention of a sacrifice
of praise and thanksgiving, which appears to include
the whole rite 1 ; and the communicants “ offer and
present themselves, their souls and bodies, as a living
sacrifice.” But of any other kind of sacrifice, and
particularly of any sacrificial oblation of the conse-
crated elements, there is not a word. The Conse-
cration is immediately followed by the Communion,
which is the great business of the whole. On the
other hand, the Council of Trent pronounces an
anathema on those who say that there is not offered
to God in the Mass a true and proper sacrifice, or
that the offering consists only in Christ’s being given

1 “ This our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 95

to us for manducation ; or that the sacrifice of the
Mass is only one of praise and thanksgiving, or a
bare commemoration of the sacrifice performed on
the Cross, and not propitiatory. A more direct
conflict of views, if they are supposed to relate to
the same subject, or to two subjects not essentially
different from one another, it would be difficult to
conceive ; for that which the Council so emphatically
denies to be the sacrifice of the Mass, is the only
thing to which our Church gives the name of her
sacrifice. That which the Council declares to be the
true and proper sacrifice of the Mass, is an offering
as to which our Church is absolutely silent.

It might have seemed to any one who read our
Communion Office, a strange and hopeless under-
taking to bring it into harmony with the Mass ; and
I think that the Ritualists who have made the attempt,
have failed to produce any thing more than a deceptive
show of resemblance ; but of the harmony between
their own views and those of the Church of Rome in
this respect, they have given the most unequivocal
signs. The rite which they celebrate they describe
as the Sacrifice of the Altar, or the Mass. The
splendour with which they invest it is certainly more
appropriate to the oblation of a sacrifice than to the
reception and participation of a gift. And, feeling
that this would still be insufficient for the purpose,
they interpolate our Office with large extracts from
the Canon of the Mass, in which the Sacrifice is
explicitly announced, and which the “ celebrant ” is
directed to use as private prayers 2. I must own
that there is something in this adulteration, — as I

2 See “ Suggestions for the Due and Eeverent Celebration of the
Holy Eucharist,” printed for the Confraternity of the Blessed
Sacrament.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

think I may not improperly term it, — of the Prayer
Book out of the Missal, which to my sense has an
unpleasant savour of artifice and disingenuousness.
It is a proceeding of which I think both Churches
have reason to complain : the one, that her mind is
not only disregarded, but misrepresented ; the other,
that her treasures are rifled to set off her adversary
with a false semblance of likeness to herself.

But still all this does not amount to a proof that
there has been any departure from the express
teaching of our Church with regard to the Sacra-
ment. And in one important particular there can
be no doubt that those who carry the assimilation of
ritual to the greatest length, most decidedly and
sincerely repudiate the Bomish doctrine. With our
twenty-eighth Article, — whether for the reasons
there assigned or not, — they reject the dogma of
Transubstantiation. So indeed they might do, with
perfect consistency, even if they used the Homan
Liturgy without curtailment or alteration; for to
those who have studied the subject, it is well known
that the Canon of the Mass is so far from teaching
that dogma, that it positively witnesses against it,
and can only be reconciled with it by the most
violent artifices of interpretation \ The Canon had
been fixed many centuries before the dogma was
defined. And here I cannot refrain from pausing
for a moment to remark, that there is perhaps no
head of theological controversy in which our Church

3 The consecration is followed by the prayer : “ Supra quae pro-
pitio et sereno vultu respicere digneris, et accepta habere sicuti
accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tni justi Abel, et sacri-
ficium. Patriarchs nostri Abrahse, et quod tibi obtulit Summus
Sacerdos tuus Melchidezech sanctum Sacrificium, immaculatam
Hostiam.” What a comparison, when Jesus Christ Himself is
supposed to be on the altar !

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

stands in more advantageous contrast with Rome,
or in which we have more reason thankfully to
recognize her characteristic moderation, than this.
The tenet of Transubstantiation, decreed as an
article of faith, combines in itself the two extremes
of irreverent rationalism and presumptuous dog-
matism. As a speculation of the Schools, it is
essentially rationalistic ; a bold and vain attempt to
pry into mysteries of faith impenetrable to human
reason. As a dogma, it exhibits the spectacle of a
Church so forgetful of her proper functions, as to
undertake to give a Divine sanction to a purely meta-
physical theory, the offspring of a system of profane
philosophy. This rationalistic dogmatism gives an
imposing air of solidity and compactness to much in
the Roman theology which, on closer inspection,
proves to be utterly hollow and baseless. A conclu-
sion is reached through a process of vicious ratio-
cination, composed of ambiguous terms and arbi-
trary assumptions. In itself it is “ a fond thing
vainly invented.5 5 But it is withdrawn from all
inquiry, and stamped with the character of a Divine
revelation, by means of the dogma of Papal or
Conciliar infallibility. This however, when ex-
amined, turns out to be itself the product of a like
abuse of reason. We are reminded of the Indian
cosmology, in which the earth rests on the elephant,
the elephant on the tortoise, and the tortoise — on
empty space. The Church of England, on the con-
trary, has dealt with this subject in a spirit of true
reverence as well as of prudence and charity 4. She
asserts the mystery inherent in the institution of the
Sacrament, but abstains from all attempts to inves-

4 See however Appendix D.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

tigate or define it, and leaves the widest range open
to the devotional feelings, and the private medita-
tions of her children with regard to it. And this
liberty is so large, and has been so freely used, that,
apart from the express admission of Tran substantia-
tion, or of the grossly carnal notions to which it
gave rise, and which, in the minds of the common
people, are probably inseparable from it, I think
there can hardly be any description of the Real
Presence, which, in some sense or other, is uni-
versally allowed, that would not be found to be
authorized by the language of eminent divines of our
Church ; and I am not aware, and do not believe,
that our most advanced Ritualists have in fact over-
stepped those very ample bounds.

But I am not so sure that it is possible to reconcile
their view of the Eucharistic Sacrifice with that of
the Church of England, or to distinguish it from that
of the Church of Rome. The subject is one which
requires the utmost precision of thought and lan-
guage, to avoid either falling into or giving occasion
for misconception. At every step we are in danger
of being misled by ambiguous terms, and of reason-
ing upon them in a sense different from that in which
they are used by those with whom we contend. I
wish very much to keep this present to my own
mind and to yours in that which I am about to say.

The Council of Trent anathematizes those who
affirm that the Sacrifice of the Mass is not propitia-
tory, or that it benefits only the receiver, or com-
municant ; or that it ought not to be offered for
quick and dead, to have remission of pain and guilt.
The word propitiatory is one of those which admit of
two senses : the one, strict and proper ; the other,
loose and inexact. It might be understood to mean

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

nothing more than acceptable to God , as that “ living
sacrifice ” of our bodies, spoken of by St. Paul, or as
our common prayers made in the name of Christ.
In this sense it might not unfitly, though impru-
dently, because in a way so very liable to misap-
prehension and abuse, be applied to that memorial
of the one only real propitiation, which the Church
makes in her Eucharist. This, however, is most
certainly not the sense in which the Church of Pome
asserts that the Sacrifice of the Mass is propitiatory ;
for she regards it, not indeed as a repetition of the
offering made on the Cross, but neither as a simple
commemoration of that. It is, in her view, a repe-
tition of the Sacrifice which she holds to have been
actually made, not merely signified as a thing to
come, at the Last Supper, for the remission of the
sins of the Apostles and of many5. There can there-
fore be no doubt in what sense she directs the priest,
at the close of the Mass, to pray that the sacrifice
which he has offered “ may be acceptable unto God,

5 Bellarmin, “ De Missa,” i. c. xii. : “ Christus in ultima Coena
seipse sub specie panis et vini Deo Patri obtulit, et idipsum jussit
fieri ab Apostolis et eorum successoribus usque ad mundi consum-
mationem. Sed hoc est sacrificium vere ac proprie dictum ob-
tulisse, et offerendum instituisse.” So, in nearly the same words,
Bona, “ Rerum Liturgicarum,” i. c. 4. Melchior Canus, “ De Locis
Theologieis,” xii. c. 12, draws a distinction between the efficacy of
the Sacrifice of the Cross and that of the Last Supper : “ Alia
efficientia hostise illius est, quam Christus palam mactavit in cruce :
alia illius est quam sub speciebus definitis mystice prsebuit in
coena. Ilia generalis est, nec per sacrificium modo, sed per omnia
sigillatim sacramenta ad effecta longe diversa applicatur. Haec
peculiaris efficientia est, et sub speciebus certis ad peculiaria quae-
dam effecta concluditur. Obtulit ergo Christus in coena turn pro
culpa veniali, turn pro poena quae pro culpa etiam mortali de-
beretur.” The Bishop of Brechin (Primary Charge, 2nd edit. p. 52)
goes no farther than to say, “ At that first Eucharist that Sacrifice
was presented to the Father before it was made.”

G 2

100

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

and propitiatory for himself and all for whom he has
offered it.” What, then, must we infer from the
fact that this very prayer is one of those which are
recommended for the use of our clergy in the ad-
ministration of the Lord’s Supper at the correspond-
ing part of the Office 6 ? Must we not conclude that
it is in the very same sense that, in a manual of
devotion accredited by the same authority, the cele-
bration of our Liturgy is described as a “ Sacrifice
of praise and propitiation,” in which our Lord,
£,£ through His own presence communicates the vir-
tues of His most precious death and passion to all
His faithful, living and departed 7 ”

I do not see how this language is to be reconciled
with the doctrine of our Church, even as expounded
by divines of that school which takes the highest
view of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. But if we suppose
that it is meant to express sound Anglican doctrine
in Roman phraseology, how strong must be the
leaning towards Rome which prompts the use of her
language, where it is apparently most at variance
with the sense which the authors intend to convey !
The words which I was just now reading may have
reminded you that the strongest condemnatory lan-
guage to be found in our Articles is that of the
Thirty-first, where ££ the sacrifices of Masses, in the
which it was commonly said that the priest did
offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have
remission of pain or guilt,” are branded with the
name of “ blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.”
In the celebrated Tract xc. it was contended, that
the censure of the Article was aimed, not at the

6 Suggestions, &c.

7 The Manual of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament,

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

101

creed of tlie Roman Church, but at certain opinions
which were no essential parts of her system ; and
that it neither speaks against the Mass in itself,
nor against its being an offering for the quick and
the dead for the remission of sin, but against its
being viewed as independent or distinct from the
Sacrifice of the Cross 8.” I am not just now con-
cerned to inquire whether this opinion is well founded
or not, or how far the Church of Rome is irrevocably
pledged to that exposition of the decrees of Trent
which was given by her great apologists, and which
is now generally received by all members of her
communion. I would only observe that the doubt
itself implies that the language of the decrees is in
perfect harmony with that exposition, even if it
admits of an explanation which would bring it nearer
to doctrine which may be held in the Church of
England. When therefore that language is used, as
it is, in forms of devotion which are recommended as
private accompaniments of the ritual which is stu-
diously assimilated to that of Rome, without any
qualifying explanation, it can only be understood in
the sense generally received, — a sense in which even
the author of Tract xo. did not profess to believe
that it could be reconciled with the teaching of our
Church, or with what he then held to be the truth.
And again, I desire you to observe, if the language is
supposed to be borrowed in a different and sounder
sense, how strong must be the predilection which it
indicates for every thing that has the Roman stamp
upon it.

This close approximation to Roman views and prac-
tice, in connection with the predominance assigned

8 See Appendix C.

102

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

to that sacrificial aspect of the Lord’s Supper, which
it is so difficult even to detect in the English Service
Book, over that of the Sacrament, which there alone
meets the eye, is especially conspicuous in the kind
of encouragement given by clergymen of the Ritual-
istic school to the attendance of non- communicants
during the celebration 9. Services exactly corres-
ponding to the Low Masses of the Church of Rome,
are multiplied in their churches, without any design
of affording additional opportunities of communicat-
ing, for congregations in which few are expected or
desired to be more than listeners ; most indeed not
so much : for as they are provided with “ manuals of
devotion to be used at the celebration of the Holy
Eucharist by such as do not communicate,” they
may be as little aware of what is said and done at the
Holy Table, as if they were outside the door, and
only apprised of the moment of consecration by the
tinkling of a bell. The practical question is one of
some little difficulty. I should think it a most un-
warrantable encroachment on the rights of conscience
to compel any of the congregation to withdraw, if
they wish to remain, though without any intention
of communicating. This of course must needs be
left to every one’s discretion. But I should also
consider it as an intrusion into the sanctuary of
private devotion, absolutely and indiscriminately to
condemn or discourage such attendance. I fully
admit that there may be many cases in which it may
tend to edification, without the slightest tinge of super-
stition. I expressed the same opinion in a Charge
several years ago, and I see no reason for changing it
now. But attendance simply with a view to edifi-

0 See Appendix I).

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

103

cation, is one thing : attendance in the belief that
the proper benefit of the ordinance may be enjoyed
without reception, seems to me another and quite a
different thing. This, if I am not mistaken, and not,
as has been argued, a vulgar error, by which it was
supposed that the Sacrifice of the Cross itself is
repeated in every Mass, was the doctrine which lay
at the root of the practice condemned by the Thirty-
first Article 1 . From this doctrine naturally sprang
the indefinite multiplication of solitary Masses, each
of which was held to possess a certain inherent
value, quite distinct from that of the Sacrifice of the
Cross, though not independent of it, and which
might be applied, according to the intention of the
priest, either to the living, or, which was the more
frequent occasion of that multiplication, to the
departed, for the purpose of obtaining their release
from Purgatory. The abuses reproved by the Coun-
cil of Trent were only casual incidents of the prac-
tice, and in no way necessary consequences of the
doctrine, which the Council distinctly asserted, ex-
pressly “ approving of those Masses in which the
priest alone communicates sacramentally,” and on the
ground, that “ they are celebrated by the public minis-
ter of the Church, not for himself only, but for all
the faithful who belong to the Body of Christ ” — in
other words, as our Article has it, “ for the quick
and the dead.” When the doctrine is received among
ourselves, it will be only the effect of outward tem-
porary restraints, if it is not accompanied by the
practice which the Article condemned, not indeed
simply by itself, but along with, though not solely
or mainly on account of, its incidental, gross and

See Appendix C.

104

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

shameless abuses, the recurrence of which, it may be
hoped, we have no reason to fear.

But this ritual movement has by no means reached
its term. It is still in the full vigour of its early years.
It appears to be advancing both extensively, in the
work of proselytism, and intensively, in doctrinal inno-
vation, not always distinctly enunciated but clearly
intimated. Its partizans seem to vie with one another
in the introduction of more and more startling novel-
ties, both of theory and practice. The adoration of the
consecrated Wafer, reserved for that purpose, which
is one of the most characteristic Romish rites, and
a legitimate consequence of the Romish Eucharistic
doctrine, is contemplated, if it has not been already
adopted, in some of our churches, and the Romish
Festival of the Corpus Christi instituted for the more
conspicuous exercise of that adoration, has, it ap-
pears, actually begun to be observed by clergymen
of our Church. Already public honours are paid to
the Virgin Mary, and language applied to her, which
can only be considered as marking the first stage of
a development, to which no limit, short of the fall
Romish worship, can be probably assigned.

In the presence of these facts, the statement of
the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation,
that — “ in the larger number of the practices which
were brought under their notice, they could trace no
proper connexion with the distinctive teaching of the
Church of Rome,” — seems much better fitted to excite
surprise, than to administer consolation, or inspire
confidence. But it was to me still more surprising
to hear from one speaking in another place, with the
weight of high authority, and under very grave
responsibility 2 — a most deliberate and solemn declara-
2 Chronicle of Convocation, Feb. 9, 1866, p. 165.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

105

tion of his belief, “ that this present movement is not
a movement towards Rome.” And yet, paradoxical
as it may seem, I will own that there is a sense in
which I can myself believe that this movement is not
a movement towards Rome. Not certainly in the
sense that it has any other direction. Not in the
sense that its “ ultimate end and aim ” — as has been
said by one who appears to have had means of under-
standing it thoroughly — is any thing less than “ to
make the doctrine, practice, and worship of the An-
glican Church as nearly as possible identical with the
Roman 3.” In that sense I cannot doubt that it is a
very decided and rapid movement towards Rome.
But in another sense I might say, though I should
not think it a happy way of expressing my meaning,
that this present movement — and I should lay great
stress on the word present — is not a movement
toward Rome. I believe that many at least of those
who are most actively engaged in it are not at
present contemplating secession from the Church of
England, and do not even desire that it should be
immediately absorbed in the Church of Rome. I
may say indeed that, with regard to a considerable
number of them, there are clear proofs that this is
not their present bent or aim. That which they
have in view is quite another thing : something
indeed which I can only regard as a dream and a
delusion, but which as long as they cherish this delu-
sion, will keep them in their present position. Their
real object has been lately brought somewhat promi-
nently under public notice, by some very remarkable
documents, which at the same time afford the best
means of forming a judgment on its prospects of
success.

3 See Archdeacon Wordsworth’s speech in the debate on Ritual.

106

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

From them we learn that a Society has- been
founded under the name of an “ Association for the
Promotion of the Unity of Christendom/ 5 whose
common bond of union is an earnest desire for the
visible reunion of all Christendom, especially of the
three chief communions, the Roman Catholic, the
Eastern, and the Anglican : the agency to be employed
for compassing the end, being for the present simply
intercessory prayer. The Society was composed
chiefly of English Churchmen, clergy and laity ; but
as some Roman Catholics had been induced to join
it, it attracted the attention of their Bishops, who
referred the matter to the supreme authority at
Rome (the Congregation of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition) which issued a rescript condemning the
Association, and enjoining the faithful to beware of
uniting themselves with it under peril of heresy.
This document drew forth a letter addressed to its
author, Cardinal Patrizi, Prefect of the Holy Office,
and signed by 198 clergymen of the Church of
England, including some of its dignitaries, in which
they more distinctly explain the precise nature of
their object, which they thought the Cardinal had
misunderstood4. They disclaim the intention which
had been imputed to them, of seeking “ that the three
communions in their integrity, and each persisting
in its persuasion, might simultaneously combine into
one which they admit to be “ a scheme, from
which no ecclesiastical unity could be hoped for.”
They explain that their object is confined to an
intercommunion between the three Churches as dis-
tinct, independent, bodies, like that which existed

4 The whole correspondence may be found at the end of Arch-
bishop Manning’s “ Reunion of Christendom, a Pastoral Letter to
Clergy,” &c.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

107

between East and West before tbe separation. They
state that they have worked many years to hasten
this result : that they have effected improvements
beyond their hopes, where there was any thing
imperfect in the faith of the flock, in divine worship,
and clerical discipline, and that they have shown an
amount of good will toward the venerable Church of
Rome, which has “ rendered them suspected in the
eyes of some.” This last statement will, I think,
both receive and reflect light, if it is compared with
the facts which we had just now before us.

It seems surprising that any one moderately ac-
quainted with the history and character of the
Papacy, should have thought it possible that such a
proposal should ever be entertained at Rome. And
perhaps, but for the interference of the Roman
Catholic Bishops, it might have been long before
the desires of the Association were embodied in
one, so as to call forth the judgment of Rome upon
it. The reply of Cardinal Patrizi, energetically en-
forced by the highest Roman Catholic authority in
this country, must, I think, have convinced the most
sanguine of the utter hopelessness of the attempt
under present circumstances, or indeed without such
a change in the spirit and the principles of the
Church of Rome as would almost supersede the
necessity of any formal reconciliation 5. But whether
those who have been thus rejected and rebuked will
patiently acquiesce in their failure and disappoint-
ment— whether, when they find that all their ad-

5 It does not, however, prevent the English Church Union from
regarding “Ritualism as a means of promoting ultimately the
intercommunion of the whole Catholic Church.” Report of the
President and Council of the English Church Union on the Report
of the Lower House of Convocation on Ritual.

108

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

vances towards Rome in a growing conformity of
faith, worship, and discipline have not brought them
one step nearer to the attainment of their object ;
when they observe that the differences which sepa-
rate them from the great mass of the members of
their own communion are enormously greater than
those which lie between them and Rome, and which
are constantly decreasing, — while they know and are
frequently reminded that an act of dutiful submission
to that “ venerable Church ” will at once place them
not in a mere intercommunion but in the enjoyment
of full communion with her — whether, I say, under
such circumstances it will be possible for them long
to maintain their present ambiguous, intermediate
position, and not, however reluctantly, to be carried
down, as by an eddy : this it remains far the future
to disclose. If we were to listen to the experience
of the past, we could hardly feel a doubt as to the
final result.

But I find that in other quarters among us persons
entitled to the highest respect, and of unquestionable
attachment to our Church, are strongly persuaded
that the signs of our times are peculiarly favourable
to the prospect of a restoration of unity in Christen-
dom, though there appears to be a very wide differ-
ence among them as to the means by which the end
is to be compassed. Some ground their hopes on
the fact that, as in Italy political unity has been
accompanied by religious liberty, a door has been
thrown open for the doctrines of the Reformation,
which perhaps were never entirely stamped out
there, to be re-admitted and have free course. The
general alienation of the people from the Court of
Rome and the temporal claims of the Papacy, has
been thought likely to win favour for the foundation

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

109

of an independent national Church on the platform
of primitive doctrine, worship, and government, not
unlike, and in full communion with, our own. That
such a prospect should attract and should awaken a
lively interest in the minds of earnest and pious
English Churchmen is perfectly natural, and we
cannot but sympathize warmly with their motives
and general aims. How far the means hitherto
adopted are suited to the moral and religious condi-
tion of the country, now in the throes of a great
political crisis, it is very difficult for a foreigner to
judge. But one thing is clear. The immediate
tendency of such a movement will not be to restore
unity, but to multiply divisions and to foment religious
discord. That may, under the gracious overruling of
Divine Providence, be only a transition to a state
of unity and concord. But it is certainly possible,
and to human eyes quite as probable, that those who
think they are laying the foundation of a national
reformed Church, may find that they have only been
planting a hotbed of sects, which as they spring up
will kill one another, and leave the Church of Borne
more powerful than before 6.

Here, however, all is intelligible and consistent.
I cannot say so much with regard to the hopes which
I see are still cherished by some eminent persons of
a reconciliation with the Church of Rome on the
basis of a common doctrine ; still less with regard
to their opinion that the present juncture affords
peculiar encouragement to such hopes. That the
spread of unbelief should have suggested, or rather

6 This was written before I had seen “ a Memorandum on Church
Reformation in Italy, drawn up and issued with the joint sanction
of the Bishops of Gibraltar and Pennsylvania.” But the perusal of
it has rather confirmed than altered my opinion.

110

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

have strengthened, the wish for such re-union, I can
readily understand. But how it has removed or
lessened the obstacles which before stood in the way,
I am at a loss to comprehend. The scheme is in
the main a renewal of that which was the subject of
much discussion and negotiation toward the end of
the seventeenth century. It was then proposed
under most singularly propitious political auspices,
such as have never been seen since, and are not likely
to recur. The Pope of that day gave it the utmost
encouragement possible in his position. It was not
in Italy but in Prance, not from an Ultramontane
doctor or prelate, but from Bossuet, the champion of
the Gallican liberties, that it received its death-blow,
in the declaration that his Church would never recede
from a single point of her doctrine, and particularly
from that laid down by the Council of Trent 7 .

How immensely the difficulties, which then were felt
to be insurmountable, have since increased, has by no
one been shown with more luminous demonstration
than by the eminent theologian, who is at once the
warmest supporter and the most authoritative ex-
positor of the revived scheme of pacification and re-
union. From his “ Eirenicon” we learn, on the one
hand, the extravagant extent to which the worship of
the Virgin Mary has been already carried in the
Church of Home, and how very nearly it has superseded

7 See Lettres xxi. xxii. xxviii. in the Correspondence between
Leibnitz and Bossuet (CEuvres de Bossuet, Tome xi.) Bossuet ob-
serves (Lettre xi.) that nothing would be gained on the Pro-
testant side, even if the Council of Trent was deprived of all autho-
rity : “ puisqu’il lie faudrait pas moins croire la Transubstantia-
tion, le Sacrifice, la primaute du Pape de droit divin, la priere
des Saints, et celles pour les morts, qui ont ete definies dans les
Conciles precedents.” The difficulty as to the Papacy was recog-
nized by the author of Tract xc. in his letter to Dr. Jelf.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

Ill

reliance on the mediation of Christ, who is generally-
regarded as the terrible Judge, whose severity can
only be softened by the all-availing intercession of
His more compassionate mother : and further, that
this kind of devotion did not even reach its culmi-
nating point in the additional honour paid to her in the
new dogma of her Immaculate Conception, but is sup-
posed to be yet far from the last stage of its develop-
ment, and is expected to yield a larger harvest of
dogmatic novelties. And while we are thus led to
see how deeply the Church of Rome is pledged to a
doctrine and practice from which most of us recoil,
as one of the grossest corruptions of Christ’s religion,
we learn on the other hand that, during the same
period, especially during the reign of the present
Pope, the claims of the Papacy have been making
continual progress, and have now reached the length
of despotic authority in the Church, and of a per-
petual divine inspiration, ensuring his infallibility far
beyond the limits of faith and morals assigned to it
by the most strenuous assertors of the Papal supre-
macy in former ages.

To these facts I must add another, which appears
to me of no slight significance in the present ques-
tion— that the highest authority among the Ro-
manists in this country has been recently com-
mitted to one who, some fourteen years ago,
seceded from the Church of England. That he
should take the most unfavourable view of the com-
munion which he left, and should be inclined to
exaggerate the doctrinal differences which separate
it from that of his adoption, was almost a necessity
of his position, to guard himself against the imputa-
tion of rashness, in quitting his old home on light
grounds, and a little detracts from the weight of his

112

A CHAEGE TO THE CLEEGY

new opinions among his old, if not among his new
friends. But that which appears to me most signi-
ficant in that selection is, that the same person is the
most strenuous among the advocates of Ultramontane
views of Papal authority, and would be the last to
accept any overtures for reconciliation on any other
terms than those of unconditional submission. On
this point his published declarations have been most
explicit and distinct, and it is not his fault if any
person or body outside the Church of Rome expects
to be received into it otherwise than as a pardoned
penitent.

With this history in his mind, and this state of
things before his eyes, and recorded and described
by himself for the instruction of others, the author
of the “Eirenicon” says, as the sum of the whole
matter, and speaking, no doubt, in the name of many
followers : “ On the terms which Bossuet we hope
would have sanctioned, we long to see the Church
united 8 and believing that there are individuals in
the Roman Communion, who, in their hearts share
that longing, he says : “To such we stretch forth
our hands9 of course, for such help as individuals
can give ; not, it would seem, in this case, a very
solid ground of hope. I do not, however, presume
to say that the course of events may not be shaped
by Divine Providence to such a result. But I think
I may venture to believe that, before this comes to
pass, a revolution must have taken place in the
Church of Rome, by which the Pope has been made
not only to abdicate his usurped authority, but to
declare many aets of his own and of his predecessors,
done in the exercise of that authority, null and void.
God grant that such a day may come. But even
8 Page 335. 9 Page 334.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVIDS.

113

then I should not have expected that the compromise
would have been quite satisfactory to divines of that
school which insists on the most rigorous preciseness
of dogmatical definition, but should have thought
it likely to be rather more congenial to some who
are reproached with the breadth of their views.
And I am not sure that there would not still be
danger of confusion and misunderstanding. What
seems to be contemplated as the basis of the agree-
ment is, that the Decrees of Trent should be read by
Anglicans in the Anglican sense, the Thirty-nine
Articles by Roman Catholics in the Roman sense.
The case would be something like that of a system
of imitative signs, such as are used in some parts of
the East, common to several nations speaking wholly
different languages. The same document, written in
these characters, might be read by two persons, to
whom it conveyed the same ideas, but who expressed
them by sounds which made the readers mutually
unintelligible, each, as the Apostle terms it, “ a bar-
barian” unto the other. Only a bystander of superior
information could know that they meant the same
thing. I must not, however, omit to express my own
conviction that the Articles are, not in sound only but
in sense, at irreconcilable variance with the Decrees of
the Council. So it has appeared both to Anglican
and to Roman Catholic writers, on a careful compa-
rison of their statements on controverted points \

1 Bishop Mant, who in his day passed for a' High Churchman,
published a little tract ( The Churches of Borne and England com-
pared,, 1836) suggested by an assertion of the late Lord Melbourne,
who concurred with Dr. Pusey in thinking that “ Homan Catho-
lics in all the fundamentals of Christianity agree with Protestants,”
for the purpose of showing, “that as to numerous fundamental
doctrines and ordinances the Roman and the Anglican Churches

114

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

And though the authority of the Pope, if it was
brought to bear on the Roman Catholic, would no
doubt overrule his opinion, and oblige him to re-
nounce it, it could not have the same effect on the
Anglican, unless he had first admitted the Pope’s
infallibility, and so had virtually become a Roman
Catholic.

These remarks, though they may here and there
have taken a somewhat wider range than was abso-
lutely necessary for the discussion of the Ritual
question, will not, I trust, appear to any one irre-
levant to it. I wished to set it before you in its
principal bearings, and to place it in its true light.
I believe, indeed, that on the main point I have said
nothing but what is universally known ; and I
should not be surprised if there were many who will
smile at the pains I have been taking to light a
candle in the broad noonday to help them to see that
which is so patent to all. I should myself have thought
it a superfluous labour, if I had not observed in some
quarters an appearance of a tacit agreement to treat
the fact as a kind of sacred mystery, familiar indeed
to the initiated but not to be divulged to the profane.

are so far from being in agreement with each other, that they are
as diametrically opposed to each other as the east and the west
and this he endeavours to do by an arrangement in which passages
from the Articles and from the Decrees and Canons of Trent are
confronted with each other in parallel columns. By a like method
the Rev. Mr. Estcourt, a Roman Catholic clergyman, in a Letter
published by Mr. Oakeley in the Appendix to his pamphlet on the
Eirenicon, is brought to the like conclusion ; that “No one who
accepts that Council as the voice of the Church and the guide of
his faith could with a safe conscience subscribe to the Thirty-nine
Articles and that “ it is difficult to see any other basis for the
reconciliation of Anglicans to the Catholic Church, than their re-
nouncing the Prayer Book and Articles, and receiving the Council
of Trent.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

115

I can be no party to a system of concealment which
appears to me neither manly nor perfectly consistent
with good faith or with a plain duty to the Church ;
and I regard the prevalence of such a system as one
of the least honourable, and the most ominous signs
of our time.

Nothing, in my judgment, can be more mis-
chievous, as well as in more direct contradiction
to notorious facts, than to deny or ignore the Home-
ward tendency of the movement. Its effects, indeed,
on those who are not engaged in it would be the
same if by them it was universally, though erro-
neously, viewed in that light. But it might, in that
case, call for a different treatment. For practical
purposes it is also very important that, without pre-
tending to foresee the actual result, we should con-
sider its natural and probable consequences. I hope
that my forebodings may be too gloomy ; but I think
I see several serious dangers looming not very far
ahead. One or two of them have been, I cannot say
pointed out, but hinted at in the Report of the Com-
mittee of Convocation, with a delicacy which was no
doubt thought to befit such a document, but which
is not always favourable to perspicuity. The greater
part and the gravest appear altogether to have escaped
the Committee’s observation, unless they were meant
to be concealed under the statement that “in the
larger number of the practices which had been
brought under their notice — they do not say in all of
them — they can trace no proper connexion with the
distinctive teaching of the Church of Rome.” As
to any danger threatening the Church of England
from such connexion as they were able to trace, or
danger of any kind on the side of Rome, the Report
is entirely silent. I wish to say a few words on this

h 2

116

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

subject, and to speak a little more plainly and fully
than the Committee felt it their duty to do. Though,
as I have said, it appears to me highly probable that
the leaders of the movement themselves have no
present thought of quitting the Anglican communion,
I think it almost inevitable that they should be giving
occasion to more or less numerous secessions to the
Church of Rome, both by fostering that general pre-
dilection for all that belongs to her, which they them-
selves betray, or rather exhibit, and by stimulating a
craving for a gorgeous ritual, which, remaining where
they are, they can never fully satisfy : even if it be
possible for thoughtful and ingenuous minds long to
feel quite at their ease in a form of worship which
strives to engraft, not only the outward ceremonial,
but the essential idea of the Roman Mass on the
Anglican Communion Office, and where the officiating
priest uses language in his private devotions quite
incongruous with that which the Church puts into
his mouth. Some I think can hardly fail to find this
hybrid kind of devotion intolerable, and to be driven
to exchange it for something more real and genuine,
more consistent and complete. That might be found
either in the Church of England or in the Church of
Rome. It is unhappily too clear in which they have
been trained to seek it. This is one form of the
danger in its Romeward aspect. There are others
still greater, though probably more remote. I have
already endeavoured to point out the process by
which the movement may reach its termination in the
secession, not of individuals, but of a whole party.
Another form which the evil might take under
different circumstances, would be an open rent in the
Church, which however might in the end lead to the
same result.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 117

But there is no less danger on the side opposed to
Rome. And this has been in some degree recognized
by the Committee, in a passage of their Report,
where they remind us, “ that the National Church of
England has a holy work to perform toward the
Nonconformists of this country : and that every
instance, not only of exceeding the law, but of a
want of prudence and tenderness in respect of usages
within the law, can hardly fail to create fresh diffi*
culties in the way of winning back to our Church
those who have become estranged from her commu-
nion.” This is indeed an allusion to a very grave
and unquestionable fact, but couched in terms which
seem to me singularly inappropriate, and tending to
conceal both the real nature and the extent of the
danger. It might lead any one to imagine that the
Nonconformists with whom we have to deal, are,
like the dissenters from the Russian Church, such
sticklers for rigid rubrical uniformity* that they are
likely to be scared away from us by any deviation
from the letter of the Prayer Book. I need not
observe how directly this would* reverse the real state
of the case, or that, if the innovations which offend
many, I believe I may still say most Churchmen, are
peculiarly obnoxious to the Nonconformists of this
country, it is not simply as innovations, but because
they present the appearance of the closest possible
approximation to the Church of Rome. And the
danger on this side is far greater than that which is
suggested by the language of the Report. It is not
merely that we may make fewer converts from the
ranks of Dissent, but that we may strengthen them
by large secessions, perhaps of whole congregations,
from our own. And the danger — if I ought not
rather to say the certain and present evil — does not

118

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

end there. These proceedings both tend to widen
the breach between ns and Dissenters, and to stimu-
late them to more active opposition, and furnish their
leaders with an instrument which they will not fail
to use for the purpose of exciting general ill will
toward the Church, and weakening her position in
the country.

And it must be remembered that these injuries
which she may suffer on opposite sides may be
going on together simultaneously. There is nothing
in the one to lessen, nothing that must not aggra-
vate the other. For every proselyte who is drawn
from us to Rome, we may reckon on others who will
leave us for Geneva. That this damage will be com-
pensated by any accession of numbers from either
quarter is, with regard to Dissent, in the highest
degree improbable : as to Rome, it is neither pretended
nor desired.

The object for which the Committee was appointed,
was entirely practical. It was “ to inquire as to such
measures as might seem to them fit for clearing the
doubts and allaying the anxieties ” which the Lower
House had represented as existing upon the subject
of Ritual, and as calling for consideration. It was
highly proper that, before they proceeded to perform
this task, they should take a view of the state of the
case on which they were to advise : and it is only to
be regretted that this view was somewhat oblique
and one-sided. Their practical proposals, however,
though in them must be supposed to lie the whole
fruit of their deliberations, and the pith and essence
of the Report, while all the rest, however valuable,
was only preparatory and incidental, are, with one
notable exception, purely negative, and inform the
House what in their opinion ought not to be done.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

119

But even this rather scanty amount of information is
very imperfectly and ambiguously conveyed. They
deprecate a resort to judicial proceedings, as tending
to promote, rather than to allay dissension. But in
the sentence immediately preceding, they had ex-
pressed an earnest wish, that such a course might not
be found necessary ; clearly implying that it might
be found necessary ; but leaving the reader to guess
both what kind or case of necessity they had in their
minds, and whether in that event it would still in
their opinion have the same evil tendency. It would,
I think, have been desirable that they should have
stated whether in their opinion it was to be wished,
that the present obscurity and uncertainty in the
state of the law should be removed, and whether
they knew of any way by which this could be
effected without a resort to judicial proceedings.
We know from an eminent member of their own body
how utterly inadequate any Opinion of counsel is for
such a purpose. Though deprived of the benefit of
their guidance on this important point, I venture to
think that there are two conditions on which a moral
necessity for resort to judicial proceedings would
arise 2. The one would be, if any clergyman should

2 I am here assuming that the Ritual innovations are intro-
duced by Incumbents, and not by Stipendiary Curates ; a thing of
which I happen never to have heard, though Sir H. Thompson, in
a Speech delivered in the debate in Convocation, which he has
published in a pamphlet entitled, “ Ritualism, a plea for the Sur-
plice,” seems to suppose that it is a very common, if not the most
common case, and on this fact grounds a charge of want of
“vigour” against the bishops, on whom it is always easy and
pleasant to lay the blame of every thing amiss in the Church. It
would of course be easy to revoke the Licence of a “ contumacious
stipendary Curate,” hut it does not seem to me at all clear that
“ such a step,” hy “ provoking an appeal to the Primate,” from

120

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

attempt to introduce the Ritual innovations in his
parish church against the will of any considerable
part of his congregation : and the other, if he should
persist in so doing after having been admonished and
dissuaded by his Bishop. I consider every such
attempt as an audacious and culpable aggression on
the rights of the parishioners, which I should wish
to see repressed, either by judicial or even, if neces-
sary, though I should exceedingly deplore the
necessity, by legislative interference.

But I am not for the present prepared to lay down
any more absolute and comprehensive rule of action,
though many persons — some of them worthy of all
respect — call loudly for the interposition of authority
in every case, to put down the excess of Ritualism,
wherever it shows itself : and therefore even where
the whole or the bulk of the congregation earnestly
desire it, and none take offence at it. On the same
principle on which I would interfere for the protec-
tion of parishioners, on whom their minister attempts
to force a novelty which they dislike, I should scruple
to deprive a congregation of a form of worship which
has become dear to them, though it is one of which
I disapprove. And here we must be on our guard
against exaggerating the importance of outward
forms, and supposing that some great thing has been
gained when they have been suppressed, though the
opinions of which they are the visible exponents
remain unchanged. Here I agree with the Com-
mittee* when they deprecate any attempt to establish
a rule applicable to all places and congregations
alike. I consider a uniformity which does not repre-

whose decision there would be no further appeal, would “ secure a
speedy and satisfactory settlement of the question.”

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVIDS.

121

sent, but is the substitute for unanimity, as a very
questionable blessing. I adopt the maxim of the
Committee on a much higher authority. It was
not in the spirit of our last Act of Uniformity, but
under the guidance of one as opposite to that as light
to darkness, that St. Paul wrote those ever memo-
rable words for the perpetual rebuke of all narrow-
mindedness and tyrannical encroachments on the
rights of conscience and Christian liberty : “ One
man esteemeth one day above another : another
esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be per-
suaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day,
regardeth it unto the Lord ; and he that regardeth
not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He
that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God
thanks ; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth
not, and giveth God thanks.”

I observed that there was one notable exception
to the generally negative character of the practical
measures suggested by the Committee, and therefore
I am perhaps bound to notice it. It seems that
some of them shared the opinion of those who con-
sider the paucity of Bishops as the chief root of evil
in the Church; and applying this principle to the
present case, they remark that “ both excesses and
defects in ritual observance are symptoms of a deep-
seated evil, namely, the want of a more effective
working of the Diocesan system.” This is the
gloomiest view that has yet been taken of the sub-
ject. It shows that, except for the sake of this
particular disclosure, the appointment of the Com-
mittee was totally useless ; and that, as the remedy
of the evil depends on a contingency indefinitely
remote, namely, an adequate multiplication of
Bishops, the case is practically hopeless. It is

122

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

therefore to myself a comfort to believe, that the
remark is simply the offspring of some fervid imagi-
nation, without any foundation in fact 3 *.

The Report concludes with a general observation,
which, as such, may be true, whether applicable or not
to the subject of the inquiry — “ Excess of Ritualism is,
in fact, the natural reaction from unseemly neglect of
solemn order.’ 5 But it is clearly implied, that in the
opinion of the Committee, the latest development of
Ritualism is an instance of such reaction. This, as
I have already intimated, I believe to be a mistake.
That the movement in its origin some thirty years ago
was partly the effect of a reaction, I think highly
probable ; but that it is so in its present phase, I
find no reason whatever to suppose. And I am
sorry that the Committee appear to lend their coun-
tenance to a kind of recrimination, which I often
hear, but which does not seem to me either quite
logical, or very becoming. When a Ritualist is re-
proached for his innovations by a clergyman of the
opposite school, he has a favourite retort always at
hand : “ If you take liberties with the Prayer Book,
e by neglect,’ as the Committee expresses it, c of its
plain rules and curtailment of its Offices,’ have I not
a right to make the Liturgy as exact a copy as I can
of the Mass ?” I do not say that this argument is
more unsound than it would be to reply on the other
side — though I am not aware that this has ever been
done — “ If you turn the Communion Office into
a Mass, have I not a right to neglect plain rules of
the Prayer Book, and to curtail its Offices ?” It

3 The Export has so much the look of a mosaic of compromises,
cemented by a general disposition in favour of Eitualism, that it

would be hardly fair to impute this particular fancy to the whole

Committee.

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S.

123

would be hard to say, on which side there is the
more grievous lack both of sound reason and sense
of duty.

But though the Committee’s observation is so
questionable as to its historical correctness, and must
tend to divert attention from the real state of the
case and gist of the controversy, it may very profit-
ably remind us of another grave danger with which
we are threatened by the Ritual movement ; the
danger, I mean, of its producing an “unseemly
neglect of solemn order,” which is “the natural
reaction from excess of Ritualism,” even when it has
no special significance, much more from that which
we are now witnessing. The jealousy and suspicion
which it unavoidably awakens in Churchmen of a
different school, must disturb the harmony which
was beginning to prevail, notwithstanding the pro-
vocations to discord and ill-will, ministered by some
of the Journals on both sides, and thus check a
healthy and uniform progress in the Church at large.
The evil spirit of party will be ever at work to
magnify trifles into tests of faith, and grounds of
division, and to blind men, as well to the good which
is associated with that which they dislike, as to the
evil which mars things which are justly dear to
them. Allow me, my reverend brethren, to warn
those of you who are most adverse to the Ritual
movement, against this temptation, and to remind
you that defect is not the proper cure of excess, and
that opposite exaggerations do not counteract, but
only inflame and aggravate one another. Suffer me
to suggest to you, that some wholesome and precious
uses may be extracted from that of which, as a
whole, you may strongly disapprove. It appears to
me that you may well take occasion from it to

124

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

consider, both severally, and in common, whether
there is any thing amiss in your practice, any thing
which might be justly described as “ neglect of plain
rules of the Prayer Book, and curtailment of its
Offices,” and this, not merely to guard against the
censure of an adversary, but to avoid giving offence
to those whom you may look upon as the weaker
brethren. But further, I think there is a loud call
upon you, not to rest satisfied with a mere confor-
mity to the letter of the ordinances of our Church,
but to endeavour more and more to learn her mind
and imbibe her spirit. You are not really faithful to
her, if you neglect to avail yourselves of all the
means of grace which she commits to your steward-
ship, but having received two talents — the Word
and the Sacraments — make gain of the one, but hide
the other in the earth.

I would also express a hope that my younger
brethren, whose opinions on many points have still
to be matured and fixed, but who are open to con-
viction and earnestly seek the truth, may be led
by our present controversies to cultivate a closer
acquaintance with primitive Christian antiquity than
may hitherto have entered into the course of their
studies, and if possible not to rest content with the
information which they may draw from secondary
sources, but to go to the fountain-head, that they
may in a manner listen to the voice and gaze upon
the living features of the ancient Church. I venture
to assure them that the pleasure which they will
derive from that intercourse 'will more than repay
any labour which it may cost them. But I recom-
mend the study, because I am convinced that, rightly
pursued and regulated, it will both enlighten and
strengthen their attachment to the Church in which

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID’S. 125

they have been called to minister. But for this pur-
pose some cautions may be needed in our day, which
in other times might have been superfluous. One is,
that the student should not look at the primitive
Church through a glass tinged with Romish or indeed
any other prejudices, and that his view should be
taken downward, from the standing point of anti-
quity to the modern Church of Rome, not upward,
from her standing point to antiquity. Another,
perhaps still more needful caution is, that he should
approach the subject in a spirit of Christian freedom,
which is perfectly consistent with the love and rever-
ence which the image of the ancient Church is fitted
to awaken in Christian minds. He will have to re-
member that he is not bound to adopt or to imitate
every thing that was said or done by his fathers in
the faith, and that when he perceives a difference of
opinion or practice between the early Church and
his own, it does not necessarily follow that his own
Church is in the wrong ; as on the other hand he
may believe that she has judged and acted wisely,
without absolutely condemning the maxims and
usages of a former age. If, however, we were to
apply these general remarks to the subject which has
just been occupying our attention, we should find
but little occasion for such distinctions.

We cannot read the detailed description given by
Justin Martyr of the order of administering the
Eucharist in his day, without joyfully recognizing the
closest possible resemblance, in every material point,
between it and our own. We observe that there is
not the slightest hint that it was regarded as a Sacri-
fice, other than of prayer and praise, or the presid-
ing minister as a sacrificing priest, and not simply
as the dispenser of a holy communion. The spiritual

126 A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

food was received by all present, and was sent to
those who were unavoidably absent, but not offered
for them. But along with this general resemblance,
we perceive some points of difference between ancient
and modern practice. Those weekly assemblies of
Justin’s time were never held without the celebra-
tion of the Lord’s Supper. That was the one object
for which the people came together every Lord’s
Day. In that respect there is indeed a very wide
difference between their usage and ours. Here I
think few will say that the advantage is on our side,
though probably as few will adopt the opinion of a
learned theologian who has endeavoured to prove,
by arguments which it seems to be the peculiar pri-
vilege of Ritualists to understand, that weekly com-
munion is “ matter of Divine obligation,” alone ful-
filling the commandment of Christ, and that the
clergy who omit it, “ if judged by the rule of the
Apostles, are false to their Lord’s dying command in
a particular from which He left no dispensation 4.”
Without falling into this exaggeration we may lament
the modern departure from primitive practice in that
mutilation of the Communion Office which prevails
in most of our churches. But we also know that
this departure had its origin in an abuse which has
been carried to its greatest height by the Church of
Rome, in the encouragement given to the attend-
ance of non-communicants, which some among us
are so eager to restore. And their attempt is pro-
bably, through a natural though deplorable reaction,
one main obstacle to the general revival of the
weekly Communion.

The study of primitive Christianity will also lead

4 Archdeacon Freeman in Bites and Bitual, p. 13.

or THE DIOCESE OP ST. DAVID’S. 127

the thoughtful inquirer to see and feel the contrast
between the Church of the Catacombs and the Church
of the Yatican. In the marvellous development by
which the one passed into the other, he will above all
admire the mysterious dealings of Divine Providence,
which, without annulling the freedom of the human
will, can make even the worst of evils minister to
good. He will not deny whatever may be fairly
implied in the identity of the two, and therefore
entitled to respect ; but he will not the less clearly
see the accompanying growth of corruption and
error. He will be enabled justly to appreciate the value
of the claims set up for the modern Papacy, as the
living oracle of God, the subject of a constant Divine
inspiration, which constitutes every Pope the supreme
and unerring arbiter in all disputes which can arise
within the ever widening sphere of opinion, as dis-
tinguished from that of exact science : so that, though
a like inspiration must have been vouchsafed to Linus
and Cletus, it was in a degree immeasurably lower than
that enjoyed by Pius IX., whose Allocutions and
Encyclicals would probably to them have been simply
unintelligible. Historically, the student will know
how strangely such a claim would have sounded in
the ears of those venerable men and of the Apostolic
Fathers. And when he inquires into the ground on
which this amazing pretension is based, he finds only
a fresh illustration of that reasoning in a vicious circle
which I have already noted as characteristic of the
Pomish theology. A perfectly arbitrary and preca-
rious meaning is attached to a few texts of Scripture,
to prove the alleged infallibility : and then the infalli-
bility is used to establish the certainty of the inter-
pretation. The supercilious arrogance which, as well
as a relentless fanaticism, is naturally engendered by

128

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

this delusion, should move our deepest pity ; a feeling
like that with which we witness the serene self-
complacency visible in the features of a maniac who,
confined in a narrow cell, believes himself to be the
emperor of the world.

We have lately received a very solemn admonition
from a person who has since been placed at the head
of the English Romanists, on “ the danger and the
chastisement of those who,” like the Church of
England, “ would instruct the Church of Jesus
Christ5.” I do not know whether any consciences
have been disturbed by the sound of these words,
which contain the whole pith of the writer’s argu-
ment. It seems enough to observe, that the Church
of England has never pretended to instruct the
Church of Jesus Christ, but has always desired to
receive and transmit its teaching. But certainly we
do not regard it as a very rash or culpable presump-
tion, to believe that the Church of Alexander VI., of
Julius II., and Leo X., might have something to
learn, and still more to unlearn. And when we are
called upon to accept these new doctrines on the
ground of our Lord’s promise, of the abiding presence
of the Spirit of Truth in His Church, we may not
only rightly refuse to appropriate to a part that
which was intended for the whole, but we may
reasonably doubt, whether that which was secured by
the promise was a perpetual preservation from error,
and not rather a preservation from perpetual error,
in other words, the final prevalence of truth. That
we know is great and will prevail. With this belief
let us comfort our hearts. To this let us firmly cling

5 “ The Crown in Council on the Essays and Reviews. A Letter
to an Anglican Friend, by Henry Edward Manning,

OF THE DIOCESE OF ST. DAVID S.

129

amidst the surgings of doubt and controversy, while
we lift up our eyes to the Father of Lights, “ with
Whom ” alone “ is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning,” beseeching Him to enlighten us with His
truth, according to the measure of our need, but
above all to grant to us the higher grace of walking
faithfully by the light we have received.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX A.

I subjoin a list of the places referred to at p. 5, in which
work of church building or restoration has been set on foot.

Brecknockshire.

1. Brecon Priory Church.

2. Brynmawr.

3. Cantreff.

4. Cathedine.

5. Coelbren-

6. Llanelly-

7. Llywell.

8. Vaynor-

9. Llanfihangel Abergwessin (restoration).

10. „ ,, (new church) .

11. Llanfechan.

12. Llanfihangel Bryn Pabuan.

Radnorshire.

13. Rhayader.

14. Abbey cwmhir.

15. Aberystwyth.

16. Llanbadarnfawr.

17. Llangunllo.

Glamorganshire.
i 2

18. Swansea.

132

APPENDIX.

Carmarthenshire.

19. Carmarthen St. David's.

20. ,, (new church).

21. Llanelly.

22. Llandefeilog parish church.

23. ,, St. Anne's (new chapel).

24. Mydrim.

25. Henllan Amgoed.

Pembrokeshire.

26. Prendergast, Haverfordwest.

27. Mathry.

28. Amblestone.

29. Burton.

30. St. Bride's.

31. Pennar, Pembroke Dock.

32. Walwyn Castle.

33. St. Catherine's, Milford.

34. Llysyfran.

35. Manerbier.

I believe that some others might be added as in immediate
contemplation.

APPENDIX B.

It must be admitted that, in the Declaration or Protesta-
tion at the end of the Communion Office, the Church of
England has deviated from her principles, has come down
from her own vantage ground to that of her adversary, and
has stated the question in the way most favourable to the
doctrine of the Church of Borne ; for it is made to turn on a
purely metaphysical proposition as to the nature of body ; “ it
being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one
time in more places than one." This is virtually to fall into
the Bomish error, and to stake the truth of her doctrine on
the soundness of a scholastic speculation, which, as a Church,
she has no more right to deny, than the Church of Borne to
affirm. The real objection to Transubstantiation is, not that
it is bad philosophy, but that it is philosophy : not that it is

APPENDIX.

133

impossible, but that it is destitute and incapable of proof.
How dangerous it would be to rely on the proposition assumed
in the Declaration as a ground for rejecting the dogma of
Transubstantiation, may appear from the defence of it which
Leibnitz sets up on the basis of his own metaphysical system.
In the posthumous “ Sy sterna Theologium ” (ed. Dr. Carl Haas)
he writes : “ Equidem si demonstrari posset invictis argumentis
metaphysicse necessitatis omnem corporis essentiam in exten-
sione sive spatii determinati implemento consistere, utique
cum verum vero pugnare non possit, fatendum esset unum
corpus non posse esse in pluribus locis, ne per divinam quidem
potentiam, non magis quam fieri potest ut diagonalis sit lateri
quadrati commensurabilis. Eoque posito utique recurrendum
esset ad allegoricam divini verbi sive scripti sive traditi inter-
pretationem. Sed tantum abest ut quisquam philosophorum
jactatam illam demonstrationem absolvent, ut contra potius
solide ostendi posse videatur exigere quidem naturam corporis
ut extensum sit, nisi a Deo obex ponatur ; essentiam tamen
corporis consistere in materia et forma substantiali : hoc est,
in principio passionis et actionis, substantiae enim est agere et
pati posse.”

He then makes a few remarks on some expressions of
ecclesiastical writers apparently adverse to the doctrine, among
them that of Pope Gelasius : “ Gelasius Pontifex liomanus
innuit panem transire in Corpus Christi, manente natura
panis, hoc est qualitatibus ejus sive accidentibus (a most arbi-
trary and unwarranted interpretation) : neque enim tunc ad
metaphy sicas notiones formulae exigebantur He then proceeds
to expound his theory of matter, by which he is brought to
the conclusion, “existentia pariter atque unio substantiae et
accidentium realium in Dei arbitrio est. Et cum natura rerum
nihil aliud sit quam consuetudo Dei, ordinarie aut extraordi-
narie agere aeque facile ipsi est, prout sapientia ejus exigit.”

This great genius does not seem to have perceived that the
further he dived into the depths of metaphysical speculation,
the more certain it must be that what he would draw out
would not be a legitimate theological dogma. It was a case
for the application of his own wise remark in his answer to
Pirot on the authority of the Council of Trent (CEuvres de
Bossuet, XI. Lettre xxi. p. 105, ed. 1778) : “Nous n^avons
peutetre que trop de pretendues definitions en matiere de
Foi.”

134

APPENDIX.

Lacordaire (Lettres k des jeunes gens : ed. Perreyve, p. 106)
writes to a young friend who was perplexed by the meta-
physical difficulty : —

“ Si vous me demandez maintenant comment un corps est
present dans un si petit espace et en tous les lieux a la fois, je
vous repondrais que nous n'avons pas la premiere idee de
Fessence des corps, et qu'il n'est pas le moins du monde certain
que Fetendue divisible soit essentielle aux corps. Les plus
grands philosophes ont pense le contraire, et ont cru que les
corps n'etaient qu'un compose d^atomes indivisibles uni par
Faffinite qui les attire reciproquement, et devenant etendus
par Fespace qui se glisse entPeux, et y cause des interstices,
de sorte que plus on condense un corps, c'est a dire plus on ote
Pespace quTl renferme en rapprochant les atomes, moins il
tient de place. Voila pour la presence dans un petit espace.
Quant a la presence en tous lieux, considerez que la lumiere
est un corps, et qu'elle parcourt en une seconde soixante quinze
mille lieues ; considerez que Pelectricite est un corps, et qu'elle
parcourt en une seconde cent quinze mille lieues. Qui empeche
done quffin corps uni a la Divinite n^ait une agilite un milliard
de fois plus grande, de maniere a toucher tous les points du
globe au meme instant ?” (I must own that I do not see the
force of this illustration, as there must always be an interval
between the departure and the arrival; but what follows is
more to the purpose.) “ En outre des que le corps peut etre
inetendu, il n'est plus assujetti a la loi de la localite, et il peut
etre present en tous lieux, comme votre ame est presente k
tous les points de votre corps, comme Dieu est indivisiblement
present k tous les points de Funivers.” All excellent reasons
for abstaining from such speculations in theology.

APPENDIX C.

Mr. Newman (in Tract xc.) and Dr. Pusey {Eirenicon) agree
in thinking that Article XXXI. was intended to condemn, not
any doctrine which is and must be held by all members of the
Church of Pome who acknowledge the authority of the
Council of Trent, but only a popular error or abuse which
every intelligent member of the Roman Communion would

APPENDIX.

135

repudiate. They do not however exactly coincide with one
another in their view of the error which was condemned. In
the Tract, which I quote from Dr. Pusey's reprint, the argu-
ment is thus summed up : —

“ On the whole, it is conceived that the Article before us
neither speaks against the Mass in itself nor against its being
[an offering, though commemorative,] for the quick and the
dead for the remission of sin, [(especially since the decree of
Trent says, that ‘ the fruits of the Bloody Oblation are through
this most abundantly obtained : so far is the latter from de-
tracting in any way from the former) /] but against its being
viewed, on the one hand, as independent of or distinct from
the Sacrifice on the Cross, which is blasphemy ; and, on the
other, its being directed to the emolument of those to whom
it pertains to celebrate it, which is imposture in addition.”
(The words in brackets were added in the second edition.)

Dr. Pusey writes ( Eirenicon , p. 25) : —

“ The very strength of the expressions used ' of the sacri-
fices of Masses/ that they ‘ were blasphemous fables and dan-
gerous deceits/ the use of the plural, and the clause, ‘ in the
which it was commonly said' show that what the Article
speaks of is, not 'the Sacrifice of the Mass/ but the habit
(which, as one hears from time to time, still remains) of trust-
ing to the purchase of Masses when dying, to the neglect of a
holy life, or repentance, and the grace of God and His mercy
in Christ Jesus, while in health.”

The view taken of the Article in Tract xc. is adopted by
Mr. Medd in his essay on the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in “ The
Church and the World,” in a few passing words, p. 343,
where, after quoting the words of the Article, “ Sacrifices of
Masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did
offer Christ,” he adds the interpretation (i. e. by way of re-
enacting the Sacrifice of Calvary by an actual mactation
afresh) ; and by Mr. Stuart, in his “ Plea for Low Masses,” in
an elaborate argument, in the course of which he says, p. 35 :
“ In order to understand rightly the meaning of the Thirty-
first Article, we must remember that this Article is not directed
against the Eucharistic Sacrifice or the Sacrifice of the Mass,
nor ‘indeed against any formal authoritative doctrine on this
subject whatever, but against a certain popular misapprehension
of this doctrine which had prevailed, and which manifestly
impugned the sole sufficiency of the Sacrifice of the death of

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APPENDIX.

Christ.” The nature of this misapprehension he had just
before explained in the words : “ To think of the offering of
Christ in the Holy Eucharist as an offering made inde-
pendently of His death, — to suppose that such an offering
could have been made, for instance, if He had never died,” &c,
And p. 37 : “ As there is but one real Sacrifice, which is Christ,
once only sacrificed, i. e. upon the Cross, it would be blasphemy
to speak of sacrifices in the plural, — the Sacrifices of Masses,
for instance, — since in all the Masses or Eucharists ever yet
celebrated there has been but one real Sacrifice, which is
Christ Himself.”

There is a general objection, which seems to me to stand in
the way of both these modes of interpretation. It appears to
me very improbable that the framers of the Article should
have levelled it, not against any doctrine held by the Church
of Rome, but against either an error or an abuse which had
crept in among the people. This might have been ground for
charging the rulers of the Church of Rome with culpable
neglect or connivance, but would have been out of place in an
Article. If this had been the meaning, I can hardly conceive
that it would have been so expressed. For then the only hint
of that which was the object of such very severe condemnation,
would be contained in the single letter s , the sign of the plural
number. From this the reader would be expected to infer
that what the authors really had in their minds was this :
“ The Sacrifice of the Mass, in which the priest offers Christ for
the quick and the dead to have remission of pain or guilt ; this
we admit to be consistent with sound doctrine, but this doc-
trine has been corrupted and perverted to bad ends, through a
popular misapprehension as to the nature of the offering, which
is irreconcilable with the fulness and sufficiency of the Sacrifice
of the Cross. Such Masses we stigmatize as blasphemous
fables and dangerous deceits.” Rut how does this paraphrase,
when we have it, either explain or justify the language of the
Article ? The Mass itself remained the same rite, however
multiplied. It could not be affected by any erroneous view
that might be entertained of it, still less by any unholy purpose
to which it might be abused. How then could it be consistent
either with justice or common sense to speak of the Masses
themselves in terms which were only applicable, and only
meant to be applied, to the error and the abuse ? It might as
well be said that the administration of the Holy Communion

APPENDIX.

137

becomes a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit as often
as it is received by an unworthy communicant. The absti-
nence from any further allusion to the real scope of the Article
would be the more singular, because the writer, if he had had
the thought now attributed to him in his mind, would so
naturally and almost unavoidably have said, instead of “ the
priest did offer Christ,” “ the priest did sacrifice Christ afresh.”
On Dr. Pusey*s supposition that the thing condemned was
“the habit of trusting to the purchase of Masses;” beside
that this would be so clearly matter of discipline, not of
doctrine, the obscurity and impropriety of the language would
be still greater, and as it appears to me, absolutely incredible.
On the other hand, if the writer of the Article believed that the
Sacrifice of the Mass was in itself inconsistent with the doctrine
of “ the one oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross,” I see
no difficulty in the form of expression. He would naturally
be thinking, not only of the doctrinal error, but of the enor-
mous practical abuses which had sprung from it : and this
would, I think, sufficiently account both for the use of the
plural, the reference to the common way of speaking, and the
extreme severity of the censure.

The Rev. Mr. Estcourt (quoted by Mr. Oakeley in his
pamphlet on the Eirenicon , p. 73) utterly rejects Dr. Pusey's
construction of the Article. His own comment on it is : —

“ False and impious : nor can it be defended on the ground
of the phrase f Sacrifices of Masses/ being in the plural
number, because the term ‘ Sacrificia Missarum 9 is equally
correct, and has the same meaning with f Sacrificium Missse/
Thus, in the Missa pro Eefunctis, ‘ anima famuli tui his sacri-
ficiis purgata, et a peccatis expedita/ This Article is, there-
fore, nothing else than a charge of blasphemy and imposture
on the most holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist.” Some persons
may attach the greater weight to this judgment as coming
from a Roman Catholic priest. Candour, however, obliges me
to own that I do not set any higher value on it on that
account, and that I think Dr. Pusey "’s explanation of the plural
number more probable than Mr. Estcourfs. But it certainly
shows how little it was to be expected that the Article should
be understood in the sense assigned to it by Dr. Pusey. In
support of his opinion, Dr. Pusey reproduces a passage cited
by Gieseler from a work of an Ultramontanist Bishop of the
fourteenth century, in which the multiplication of Masses for

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APPENDIX.

unholy ends is deplored and condemned. Dr. Pusey's object
seems to be to show that the abuse to which alone he supposes
the Article to refer was, so far from being a doctrine of the
Church of Pome, that long before the Reformation it had
been censured in the strongest terms by one who was an
Ultramontanist Bishop, and even a Penitentiary of Pope John
XXII. But to me this fact appears not at all to strengthen
Dr. Pusey’s argument, but to lead to the opposite conclusion,
as it makes it the more improbable that the Article was meant
simply to condemn an abuse which was acknowledged, lamented,
and reprobated within the Church of Borne itself. But I
must further observe that this extract from Alvarus Pelagius, de
Elanctu EcclesicB, has another bearing on the meaning of our
Article, which Dr. Pusey seems to have overlooked, at all
events has not noticed. It contains an allusion to a remark-
able fact, which the writer explains so as to suit his purpose.
“ Whence also St. Francis willed that the brothers everywhere
should be content with one Mass, foreseeing that the brothers
would wish to justify themselves by Masses, and reduce them
to a matter of gain, as we see done at this day.” The words
of St. Francis himself deserve to be quoted, both on their own
account, and that their import may be better understood.
They occur in Epistola XII. (Francisci Assisiatis opera omnia :
ed. von der Burg) .

“ Moneo praeterea et exhortor in Domino, ut in locis in
quibus morantur fratres, una tantum celebretur Missa in die
secundum formam sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae. Si vero in loco
plures fuerint sacerdotes, sic sit per amorem charitatis alter
contentus audita celebratione sacerdotis alterius, quia absentes
et praesentes replet, qui eo digni sunt, Dominus Noster Jesus
Christus. Qui licet in pluribus locis reperiatur, tamen indi-
visibilis manet et aliqua detrimenta non novit, sed unus verus,
sicut ei placet, operatur, cum Domino Deo Patre et Spiritu
Paracleto in saecula saeculorum.”

On the ground of this passage, as we learn from Cardinal
Bona (Rer. Lit. i. c. 14, p. 387), the authority of St. Francis
was pleaded against the private Mass : “ En, inquiunt (Sec-
tarii), vir Dei unam duntaxat in die Missam admittit, idque
secundum formam Romanae Ecclesiae. Porro Catholici vim
hujus objectionis variis modis declinare nituntur.” He then
enumerates several of these methods, all more or less strained
and improbable. Others had, on this ground alone, pronounced

APPENDIX.

139

tlie letter a forgery. Bona himself is quite satisfied as to its
genuineness, and offers his own solution of the difficulty.
“ Ego admissa epistola tanquam vera et legitima, sumptam
ex ea objectionem nullo negotio dilui posse existimo, si dixerimus
Seraphicum Patrem, qua humilitate a Sacerdotii susceptione
ipse abstinuit, eadem hortari suos ne quotidie celeb rent."” And
as to the words “ secundum formam Roman* Ecclesi*,” which
had been misunderstood to apply to the single daily celebration,
he observes : “ Optime noverat plures in die fieri celebra-
tiones : sed sicut in regula praecepit, ut fratres officium recita-
rent secundum morem Roman* Ecclesi*, ita hie monet ut
secundum formam ejusdem Ecclesi* agantur Miss* : turn
humilitatis causa, et ne Sacerdotes ex frequenti celebratione
tepidiores fierent, hortatur ut unica celebratione, cui omnes
interessent, contenti, reliquis abstinerent.”

Bona, we see, entirely differs from A1 varus Pelagius, and
does not suppose that St. Francis either saw or foresaw any
abuse of the private Mass. The private Mass itself was never
admitted by any Roman authority to be an abuse, and it
received the express approbation of the Council of Trent.
“Nec Missas illas in quibus solus Sacerdos sacramentaliter
communicat, ut privatas et illicitas damnat, sed probat atque
adeo commendat ” [here the plural Missa is certainly equivalent
to the singular] . If, therefore, the Thirty-first Article only
condemns flagrant abuses, and is supposed to allow that which
it does not condemn, we are brought to the rather startling
conclusion that it tacitly sanctions, not only the sacrifice of the
Mass, but private Masses, which, by the Rubric at the end of
the Communion Office, the Church of England (as Mr. Stuart
reluctantly admits, “ Thoughts on Low Masses,” p. 46) has
expressly forbidden.

Turning from this to the explanation of the Article given in
Tract xc., and lately repeated by Mr. Medd and Mr. Stuart, by the
former in somewhat different terms, according to which the Article
was pointed at a popular misapprehension as to the nature of
the Sacrifice, I think that the common prevalence of such an
error, especially as it is described by Mr. Medd, has been too
hastily assumed without proof, which perhaps it would be
difficult to produce. But it is more important to observe that
Mr. Newman, when he had spoken of the Mass “ being viewed
as independent of or distinct from the Sacrifice on the Cross,”
appears to treat these two expressions, “ independent of” and

140

APPENDIX.

“ distinct from,” as synonymous, and as conveying a meaning
which he calls “ blasphemy.” But there is a very wide dif-
ference between the two things. To view the Mass as inde-
pendent of the Sacrifice on the Cross, would indeed be a very
gross error; but until I see some proof, 1 shall continue
utterly to disbelieve that it is one into which any worshipper
at the Mass, even in the darkest ages, ever fell. But though
not independent of, it might be viewed as distinct from, the
Sacrifice on the Cross ; and so it is viewed, not by the igno-
rant and vulgar only, but by the Church of Borne.

The distinction between the two things, which the language
of Tract xc. appears to confound with one another, may be
illustrated by reference to another point of doctrine. Boman
Catholic Apologists defend the use of direct prayer to the
Virgin Mary, by the explanation that nothing more is meant
than the effect of her all-powerful intercession. I may observe,
by the way, that this assumption is altogether arbitrary, and
that it is not very easy to reconcile it with language such as I
find in a Sequence in the Arbuthnott Missal, p. 439.

“ Supplicamus, nos emenda,

Emendatos nos commenda
Tuo Nato, ad habenda
Sempiterna gaudia.”

Hitherto, however, the Virgin Mary has not been elevated
by any formal definition above the rank of a creature. And
so Mr. Oakeley (“ Leading Topics of Dr. Pusey’s recent work ”)
can still say (p. 35), “ Every well-instructed Catholic (alas! if
they do not form the majority !) knows that the Blessed Virgin
possesses no power to grant petitions, except such as she derives
from God ; but he also knows that her influence with her
Divine Son, in virtue of her maternal relation (!) and of her
transcendent sanctity, must needs be such, that her will to
grant is tantamount to the fact of granting, since her will is
so entirely in harmony with the will of God, that her petitions
are all in the order of His Providence. If we knew that an
earthly sovereign had an almoner, to whom he had given the
office of distributing his bounty, we should address ourselves to
that almoner as the source from which the bounty emanates,
though conscious all the while that he was merely the instru-
ment of its bestowal.”

Such a view of the case no doubt excludes the notion that
the Blessed Virgin possesses any power of granting petitions

APPENDIX.

141

independent of God. But it as clearly invests her with a
power " distinct from ” His, and must always tend to make
her in practice the object of exclusive reliance and supreme
devotion. Even if the “ almoner ” is supposed to have no
discretion in the distribution of the Royal bounty ; the “ in-
fluence of the mother” is something perfectly distinct from
the power of the Son. And so the Sacrifice of the Mass
might not the less practically supersede that of the Cross, if
conceived as “ distinct from,” though not “ independent of”
this. And it is so conceived, not by the vulgar only, but by
the Church of Rome, speaking through her most accredited
doctors, and in her most sacred formularies. Let us hear the
prayer in the Mass which accompanies the offering of the
bread : — “ Suscipe, Sancte Pater Omnipotens, seterne Deus,
hanc immaculatam hostiam (strange language before the Con-
secration, but explained by reference to that which the bread
was to become), quam ego indignus famulus tuus offero tibi
Deo meo vivo et vero, pro innumerabilibus peccatis et offensi-
onibus et negligentiis meis, et pro omnibus circumstantibus ;
sed et pro omnibus fidelibus Christianis vivis atque defunctis,
ut mihi et illis proficiat ad salutem in vitam aeternam.” Our
Reformers, from their point of view, might well consider such
an oblation as inconsistent with the oneness of that “ finished
upon the Cross ;” and as, like the Invocation of the Virgin, on
the one hand, a mere human invention, the fruit of bold,
unlicensed speculation and unbridled fancy, and, on the other
hand, the parent of manifold mischievous superstitions; and
loathing it under both aspects alike, might describe it in terms
which we would not willingly now use, while we fully adhere
to the view which suggested them, as a “ blasphemous fable ”
and a “ dangerous deceit.”

This subject is so closely connected with that of Mr. Stuart's
“ Thoughts on Low Masses,” that I am induced to add a few
remarks on the proposal contained in that pamphlet. Mr.
Stuart laments that at the Reformation, the Low Masses,
which had drawn crowds of worshippers to our churches, on
week-days as well as Sundays, were swept away, and an order
for daily Morning Prayer, which experience has proved to be
far less attractive, indeed to offer no attraction at all, substi-
tuted for them. He has observed the crowds which attend
the early Masses in the Continental churches, and he thinks
that ours might be as well filled by an adaptation of our

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APPENDIX.

Liturgy to the like purpose. He would have it curtailed, and
the Rubrics, which say that there shall be no celebration of
the Sacrament unless there be a certain number of communi-
cants, removed, so that there may be nothing to prevent the
congregation from consisting, as in the Continental churches,
of spectators only, who come to join with the priest in the
Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Notwithstanding the title of the pamphlet, by which some
may have been alarmed and offended, it seems clear that, as to
the positive doctrine of the Thirty-first Article, Mr. Stuart's
orthodoxy is irreproachable. He takes great pains to explain that
“ there is but one real victim, which is Christ, and but one real act
of Sacrifice, which was finished upon the Cross, and therefore to
speak of Sacrifices, c Sacrificia Missarum,' in the plural number
would be a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit " (p. 38) .
He then proceeds to expound his theory of the Eucharistic Sacri-
fice : “ In the Eucharistic Sacrifice, or the Sacrifice of the
Mass (for they are but different names for the same thing),
Christ is offered, but not sacrificed — offered in memory of His
death, not put to death again. There is a real and propitiatory
sacrifice, i. e. victim, in the Eucharist, but there is no real
act of propitiation ; the priest's offering of Christ in the
Eucharist is not an act of propitiation or atonement, but only
a memorial made before God of that propitiation and atone-
ment which was effected upon the Cross; — by continually
offering the very victim Himself who was slain, we con-
tinually plead before God the merits of His death " (p. 39) . I
must observe that however, correct Mr. Stuart may be in his
view of what the Eucharistic Sacrifice should be, to avoid direct
collision with the Thirty-first Article, he is certainly mistaken
if, when he says “ there is a real and propitiatory sacrifice,
i. e. victim, in the Eucharist, but there is no real act of pro-
pitiation," he conceives himself (as the whole context appears
to show) to be expounding and not directly contradicting the
Roman doctrine of the Mass. For when, in Canon I. De
Sacrificio Missae, the Council of Trent declares, “ Si quis
dixerit in Missa non offerri Deo verum et proprium sacrificium,
aut quod offerri non sit aliud quam nobis Christum ad man-
ducandum dari: anathema sit," it is certain that sacrificium
does not mean the victim , but the act — the same act which in
Canon III. is declared to be an “ act of propitiation." “ Si quis
dixerit, Missae Sacrificium tantum esse laudis et gratiarum ac-

APPENDIX.

143

tionis, aut nudam commemorationem sacrificii in Cruce peracti
(only a memorial) non autem propitiatorium, anathema sit.”
Can Mr. Stuart have a right to say that the Eucharistic Sacri-
fice and the Sacrifice of the Mass “ are but different names for
the same thing,” when there is such a radical disagreement be-
tween his description of the one and the Council's description
of the other ? But putting the Mass out of the question and
confining myself to Mr. Stuart's view of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, I must observe that it is open to one capital objection.
It is indeed only the One Sacrifice which is to be pleaded, but
it is to be pleaded in a special manner : namely, by the offering
of the consecrated Bread and Wine in the Lord's Supper.
And the question is — first, whether such a mode of pleading
does not require the sanction of a Divine appointment, and,
if it was a mere human invention, would not be presumptuous
and profane — the more so for being engrafted on Christ's
most solemn ordinance — and next, whether any such sanction
is to be found in the records of the original institution unless
what has been imported into them by most violent and
arbitrary interpretation. Mr. Stuart would probably answer
the first part of this question in the affirmative. But as to the
other, he may be one of those who are easily satisfied with
proofs of that which it seems to them desirable to have proved,
and he may be content to interpret the words, “ Do this in
remembrance of me,” as at once the institution of Sacrifice
and the ordination of the Apostles to the Sacerdotal Office.
He has the fullest right to this opinion if he is able to hold it.
Only he should not assume that it is commonly received
among Churchmen and scholars, on whom it has not been
forced by the anathema of an infallible Council. Even, how-
ever, if it were allowable to waive this grave objection to the
theory in consideration of the general desirableness of the
object, as to which I give Mr. Stuart full credit for the very
best intentions, there would remain another which seems to
me very serious, with regard to practice. Before he could
reasonably expect that worshippers will be attracted to his
Low Masses, as in the churches of France or Belgium, two
things appear to be needed, neither of which can be admitted
to be clearly either practicable or desirable. One is, that the
English congregation should come with the same notions
of the nature and efficacy of the Eucharistic Sacrifice which
Homan Catholics bring to the Mass. The other is, that the

144

APPENDIX.

Anglican Office should be adapted to these notions. Other-
wise, even if all Mr. Stuart's suggestions were carried into
effect by the abridgment of the Liturgy and the omission of
the “ obstructive " rubrics, the result would be a most un-
satisfactory state of things. The congregation would be
thinking of one thing, the minister would be speaking to
them of another. They come to be spectators of a Sacrifice,
he tells them of nothing but a Communion, of which he
invites them to partake, though he neither expects nor
seriously desires that any one of them should do so. So far
would it be from an advantage to “ those who are near to
the altar" (p. 49), to “hear the words themselves which
accompany that offering " (an offering which is not expressed
by a single word in the service) that the best thing possible
for all present would be that the whole should pass off — as
is indeed so very nearly the case in most Low Masses — in
perfectly dumb show, so that the people, with the aid of
appropriate manuals of devotion, might follow their train of
thought, the priest his form of words, in parallel lines, without
connexion or convergency indeed, but also without conflict or
disturbance.

Apart from all theological objections, I cannot think this a
happy plan, though I fully admit the want which it is intended
to supply, and that our Order of Morning Prayer is not in its
present state adapted to the purpose of an early service which
common people, even of devout habits, could be expected to
attend. It labours under the twofold disadvantage of incon-
venient length, especially in the Lessons and Psalms, and of
monotony in the recitation. Its failure does not prove that a
shorter service, interspersed with melody, might not succeed,
at least as well as Mr. Stuart's experiment, and might not be
at least as easily introduced.

APPENDIX D.

A few passages in the Consultation of Archbishop Herman
of Cologne may be read with interest, as bearing on some
of the questions discussed in the Charge. I extract them
from the English translation of 1548, but have modernized
the spelling.

APPENDIX.

145

“ Before all things the pastors must labour to take out
of men’s minds that false and wicked opinion whereby men
think commonly that the priest in masses offereth up Christ
our Lord to God the Father, after that sort, that with his
intention and prayer he causeth Christ to become a new and
acceptable sacrifice to the Father for the salvation of men,
applieth and communicateth the merit of the passion of
Christ and of the saving sacrifice, whereby the Lord Himself
offered Himself to the Father, a sacrifice on the Cross, to them
that receive the same with their own faith.”

“ For to make men partakers in the Supper of the Lord of
the sacrifice and merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, the minister
can help no more than that first he exhibit and minister the
Holy Supper, as the Lord instituted, and then faithfully de-
clare and celebrate religiously the mystery of it : namely, the
redemption and cominution (sic) of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
furthermore dispense the sacraments (the Bread and Wine)
whereby he may stir up and confirm in them that be present
true faith in Christ, by which faith every man may himself
apprehend and receive the merit and sacrifice of Christ as
given unto him.”

“ But it is plain that men are every where in this error, that
they believe if they he present when the priest sayeth mass
and take part of the mass only with their presence, that this
very work and sacrifice of the priest, whereby he offereth the
Son to the Father for their sins, that is to say, setteth Him
before the Father with his intention and prayer, is of such
efficacy that it turneth all evil from them and bringeth them
all felicity of body and soul, though they continue in all
manner of sins against God and their conscience, and neither
perceive nor receive the sacraments out of the mass, but only
behold the outward action as a spectacle, and honour it with
bowing of knees and other gestures and signs of veneration.”

“ And whereas the holy fathers call the ministration of this
sacrament a sacrifice and oblation, and write sometimes that
the priest in the administering the Supper offereth Christ, let
the preachers know and teach other, when need shall be, that
the holy fathers by the name of a sacrifice understood not
application, which was devised a great while after the fathers,
and prevailed with other abuses, but a solemn remembrance of
the sacrifice of Christ, as Augustine expoundeth it. For while
the Supper of the Lord is ministered as the Lord instituted .

146

APPENDIX.

it, the sacrifice of Christ is celebrated and exhibited therein
through the preaching of His death and distribution of the
sacraments, that all they which rightly use the Holy Supper
may receive the fruit of this sacrifice."

“ As the pastors must diligently teach and dissuade them
which with the rest of the congregation cannot communicate
because they stick in open sins, that they be not present at
the Holy Supper, and testify unto them that if they stand
at the Supper with such a mind they do spite unto Christ,
and that it shall be damnation unto them. So they must
also diligently warn and exhort them which with a good
conscience be present at the Supper, that is to say which
truly believe in Christy the Lord, that they receive the sacra-
ments with other members of Christ."

“But forasmuch as this institution of the Lord that all
they which be present at the same Supper of the Lord should
communicate of one bread and cup, His Body and Blood, is
too much out of use, and covered a great while since
through common ignorance, it shall be needful to call men
back again treatably and gently to the observation of this
tradition of the Lord, and the preachers must beware that
the minds of the simple, which nevertheless be the true
disciples of the Lord, and are entangled in no mischievous
and wicked acts, for the which they should be restrained from
the Lord's Board, be not stricken and troubled with sore
rebukes or untimely thrusting unto the receiving of the sacra-
ment. For there be not a few which, though they cannot
thoroughly understand this mystery and the perfect use of
sacraments, yet have such faith in Christ, that they can pray
with the congregation and be somewhat edified in faith
through holy doctrine and exhortations that be wont to be
used about the Holy Supper and the ministration thereof,
yea and they may be taught and moved by little and little
to a perfecter knowledge of this mystery, and an oftener use
of the sacraments, even by this that they be present at the
Holy Supper, which abstain not from the Lord's Supper of
any contempt of the sacraments which they acknowledge in
themselves, but of a certain weakness of men and preposterous
reverence of the sacrament."

It will be seen that the first paragraph in these extracts
speaks of “ a false opinion " as to what is done by the priest
in masses , and therefore according to the principle of interpre-

APPENDIX.

147

tation which has been applied to our Thirty-first Article, might
be thought not to be directed against the mass itself. But in
the margin we read, “ The false opinion concerning the obla-
tion of the priest in the mass must be taken away.” And the
statements which follow leave no doubt as to the Archbishop's
meaning. The work appears to have been a joint production
of Bucer, Melancthon, and other Reformers (Gieseler, Lehr-
buch der K. G. 111. 1. p. 322). Luther, as appears from a
letter in De Wette's Collection, v. p. 708, was dissatisfied
with the chapter on the Lord's Supper, as not sufficiently
explicit with regard to the “ substance.'' And Gieseler
observes that it passes over the real presence of the Body.
Yet the pastors are enjoined to “warn the people that they
doubt nothing but the Lord Himself is present in the midst
of them, and giveth them His very Body and Blood, that
they ever may more fully live in Him, and He in them.''

THE END.

GILBERT AND RIV1NGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN’S SQUARE, LONDON.

C H A R G E

THE CLEEGY

DIOCESE OF LONDON,

AT HIS VISITATION,

IN DECEMBER, 1866,

ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL,

LOUD BISHOP OE LONDON,

RIVINGTONS,

LONDON, OXFORD, AND CAMBRIDGE,
1866.

T HE CLERGY

THE DIOCESE OF LONDON

tfftarje

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY

THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND AND SERVANT

A. C. LONDON.

C H A R G E.

Reverend and dear Brethren,

I greatly regret that the state of my health
prevents me from meeting you personally at
this Visitation, or speaking to you otherwise
than through the press. I have now completed
the tenth year of my connexion with you as
Bishop, and yet I only seem to be learning how
great is our work. It is, I suppose, the same
with all of us. Advancing time, giving us a
clearer insight into our people’s wants, and thus
stimulating us to ever fresh plans for their
welfare, brings to us a deeper feeling of our
weakness and our failures. This is hut the con-
dition of every true Christian’s life. And the
lesson is the same for all : Work while the brief
day lasts — do the part allotted to you ; even if
the uncertainty of life, and the shortness of time,
and the greatness of human necessities, allow us
to accomplish hut a very small portion of what

is needed. Do it energetically, do it quietly, do
it on a plan, do it in dependence upon God with
prayer. If we can ourselves accomplish hut
little, other hands will he found to perfect what
we have begun, if we have hut begun well.

Solemnized by such thoughts, let us proceed
to review our position as Christ’s ministers, and
ask what has been done, and in what we have
failed, since we met for Visitation four years
ago. Our scrutiny reaches to this : How far is
the national Church of England, and especially
the Church of this diocese, fulfilling the work
which Christ has committed to it, and how are
we each of us fulfilling our own part ? The
national Church and the Church of this diocese —
for, indeed, it is as difficult to separate the two
as it is to separate the diocese from its parti-
cular parishes, and the parishes from those who
minister in them. London, above all other
dioceses, must be indissolubly connected with the
whole national Church. We do not ignore those
powerful elements of the softening influences of
country life, not found amongst ourselves ; nor
the effect of the position, so different from ours,
in which the country clergy stand to their flocks ;
nor the vast power of University life, moulding
the thoughts of our rising youth. But still Lon-
don is the centre : To London flows yearly in a
steady tide, a large body of persons of all classes

from every county : From London the stream of
influence, however unobserved, sets in irresistibly,
through newspapers, books, letters, the converse
of friends, to hall, parsonage, farmhouse, and
cottage in the remotest country districts. If we
in London are faithless, all England suffers. If
London could but become the really Christian
centre of the nation, how would our national
Christianity grow !

Now in the scrutiny of what has been accom-
plished we must, I suppose, depend on apparent
results ; yet here is one of our greatest difficul-
ties: We know how very fallacious is this test.
We may enumerate new churches and schools,
new mission stations, additional clergymen, with
all their staff complete; but who shall tell
whether consciences have been aroused, souls
reached, characters reformed, and whether a new
generation of children is being trained in the
fear of God ? My friends, we have all need to
remember, that there is danger lest we rest com-
placently in the multiplication of our efforts
and the improvement of our machinery — things
excellent in their way and indispensable, but not
that real result, which is to be found only in a
deeper Christian character impressed more widely
on our people. Yet still with the immediate
progress of improved diocesan arrangements we
must be much occupied. We must regard these

b 2

with thankfulness, though not failing to look
wistfully beyond them, anxiously asking whether
churches are becoming tilled, whether our ad-
ditional clergy are more devoted to their work,
and whether they are quietly beginning, at last,
to see indications that their self-denying labours
are not in vain.

But, under the peculiar circumstances of our
Church during the last four years, many con-
siderations must he weighed before we can enter
on this more private discussion of our diocesan re-
sponsibilities. Certain questions are stirred that
call for settlement in reference to the whole posi-
tion of our Church. No doubt the four years from
my last Visitation, and the tAvo years which pre-
ceded them, have been an anxious time for our
Church. Strange doctrines have been rashly pro-
pounded. These have been met not only by calm
argument — as thank God they have been met —
but also at times by excited protests, which have
not always proceeded from persons well qualified
to judge of the intricate questions at issue ; and
men have sometimes seemed ready, in their zeal
against one set of errors, to plunge, like many
who opposed the ancient heresies, into other
errors equally dangerous.

There has been a great, and no doubt reason-
able, fear of nationalism; and certain persons,
whose errors are of a totally different cast, have

availed themselves of this wide-spread alarm to
work with a vigour unknown for many years in
the revival of an imitation of the imperfect
Churchmanship of the Middle Ages. Hence a
system which sprang unexpectedly into influence
some thirty years ago, and then appeared to re-
ceive its deatli-hlow by the secession to Home
of many of its chief supporters, has certainly
within the last two years proceeded to a more
open outward display of its peculiarities than
it ever ventured on, when, in the first vigour
of its youth, it fascinated many of our best in-
tellects. No wonder, then, that quiet persons,
who shrink alarmed both from infidelity and
from superstition, are much cast down. And no
wronder that angry disputants on all sides within
the Church magnify the real difficulties which
exist, while enemies without quietly smile as they
repeat rash words spoken at random amongst
ourselves, and ask, “ To what purpose are all
your labours to extend the influence of a Church
which has no certain doctrine, no catholicity,
no unity, no discipline P ”

It will detain us some time from a plain prac-
tical scrutiny of our own work, and confine that
scrutiny to narrower limits at this Visitation ;
hut I think we are hound to turn aside and show,
if we can, the fallacy of such reproaches from
without, while we protest also against the want

of faith shown by such fainthearted or angry
questionings within.

Now we grant to our opponents — we ought
never ourselves to forget — that the Church of
England does allow amongst its people great
diversity of opinion in non-essentials. This is a
necessary characteristic of a Protestant branch
of the Church Catholic. Sects of all kinds,
whether Protestant or so-called Catholic, are
narrow and unwarrantably dogmatic — venturing
to define where God’s word has not defined ;
eager to exclude from their pale all who will
not allow their minds to be forced into one
groove. Such the Church of England has never
been through any continuous period of its his-
tory, though at certain epochs vigorous efforts
have been made — and, for a time, even success-
fully— to narrow it to the dimensions of a sect.
Good men, who loved and adhered to all its essen-
tial teaching, have ever and anon been driven from
it against their will ; but in time the Church has
lamented the violence of those who thus mis-
governed it : And usually the strong bias of one
generation towards some cherished view of doc-
trine has yielded in the next to a strong reaction
in favour of opinions before unduly repressed.

It is trite to remark that the truth of Christ
revealed in his Gospel is adapted to all characters,
and that various men grasp various portions of it

as most congenial to tlieir souls, that it was so
amongst the writers of the New Testament, each,
while all were guided by the one Gracious Spirit,
still dwelling especially on his own peculiar doc-
trine, though not to the disparagement of others.
It must he so in all really apostolic Churches.
Unity in essentials (and our trust in God’s fatherly
care convinces us that essentials are always clearly
revealed) ; liberty where God’s revelation has not
decided; charity in our judgment of all men — if
the Church of England has not always manifested
these characteristics, this has been when her
rulers failed to understand her true position : But
how often has it been noted that the Church,
in whose primatial chair have sat Abbot, Laud,
Tillotson, Howley, Sumner, has never committed
itself to the dogmatism of one school of thought.

But then it is urged, and truly, that there
must be limits to this variety, or the Church will
lose all unity. It may be well that Arnold and
Keble and Daniel Wilson, trained in one uni-
versity, lived and died, with all their many
peculiar differences, ministers of one Church :
But how far is this liberty to go ? The answer is
plain. It can go no farther than is consistent
with a common belief in the essentials of the
Church’s faith, and these are plainly stated in the
formularies as in the Bible. The mind that re-
pudiates these essentials may hesitate for a time

(and God forbid that any rash upbraidings should
add fresh pain to the anxieties of doubt, or pre-
cipitate by unkindness a separation which we
deplore) ; but still, if the mind repudiates these
plainly-written essentials, it can find no lasting
peace in the English Church. Is it true that
there are men who even desire to act as Christ's
ministers amongst us, without believing in the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ? I can scarcely
credit the assertion. The Church of England,
from the beginning to the end of its formularies,
proclaims with St. Paul1 that if Christ be not
risen our preaching and faith is vain, there is no
Gospel. Eor those who do not believe in the
Resurrection of Christ we have no place, as we
have none for those who do not believe in Christ’s
Divinity, nor in the Divinity of the Third Person
of the blessed Trinity. The essentials of the
Christian faith are incorporated in our formula-
ries from the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed,
— explained and enlarged on, but not added to :
the liberty of thought which is consistent with
loyalty to our Church is therefore hedged in by
these essentials.

And then, on the other hand, since the Church
of England is not only Catholic as holding the
old faith, but also Protestant, there are essentials,
not of tl e Christian faith, but of our charter as

1 1 Cor. xv. 14, 17.

reformed from Homan error, which it is equally
vain for any man to hope that he can with a safe
conscience ignore. “ The Bishop of Borne hath no
jurisdiction in this realm of England ” (Art.
xxxvii.). “ The sacrifices of Masses, in the which
it was commonly said that the Priest did offer
Christ for the quick and the dead to have re-
mission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables
and dangerous deceits ” (Art. xxxi.) te The body
of Christ is given, taken, and received in the
(Lord’s) Supper only after an heavenly and
spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the
body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper
is faith” (Art. xxviii.) These and such like solemn
protests against Borne, giving their colour to
the whole body of our Articles, close on this side
the liberty of all who would be loyal to our Church.

Within these limits there is a wide field, and
we think it no licence, but the legitimate use of
the Christian man’s liberty, that there shall be
many varieties of opinion as of feeling amongst
those who are loyal in essentials : Not that other
matters of great though minor importance have
not often at times distressed individual souls, and
led to perplexity and separation — gloomy views
of an overstrained Calvinism, and doubts about
the power of the Sacraments. It is difficult
to enumerate all the eccentricities of wavering
opinion which may destroy a loyal trust in the

Church’s system, or render impossible a consci-
entious ministration in its service : it is enough
for us now to note the great landmarks which
warn a man that he is plunging on the one hand
into unbelief, and on the other into that super-
stitious atmosphere of human devices in which
the pure Gospel of the Apostles and of the
Church of England cannot breathe. This is the
obvious answer to those who deny that we have
any true unity because, as Protestants, we admit
liberty of individual opinion. We have that
sort of unity in essentials which Christ intended
should characterize his Church, and we desire
none other.

And here a new question is raised. If the
unity of the Church can be broken by doctrinal
error, which may or may not be much obtruded
on our attention, how can it be preserved in
the midst of those unseemly differences in the
mode of celebrating public worship which have
sprung up amongst us during the last few years,
and which all must see ? There are churches
amongst us in which the ornaments about the
Communion Table, and the dress, and attitudes,
and whole manner of the officiating clergy, render
it difficult for a stranger when he enters to know
whether he is in a Roman Catholic or a Church
of England place of worship.

Now, first, it is certain that these peculiarities

arc frequently adopted, not merely from an
aesthetic love of a worship appealing to the
senses, hut to symbolize false doctrine on the
nature of the Holy Eucharist. When this is
the case the actors in these scenes are, no doubt
conscientiously, preaching by their worship a
doctrine which is very dear to them ; but let
them remember it is not the doctrine 'of the
Church of which they are ministers.

There are others who have not gone beyond
the legitimate liberty allowed by the English
Church in their conceptions of the Eucharist, who
delight in this elaborate ceremonial, some be-
cause they are swept on by the fashion of the
day ; some, as they allege, because their reli-
gious feelings revolt from examples which have
been brought under notice of careless irreverence
in the administration of these holy rites, quite as
much to be condemned as a superstitiously elabo-
rate ceremonial. Now it is granted at once that
the Church of England does not so press unifor-
mity upon its members as to command that all
public worship shall be exactly alike. It has
ever allowed great latitude between the gorgeous
worship of its cathedrals and the plain village
harmony of country churches, or the completely
unmusical service, say of a small college chapel.
But here, as in reference to doctrine, in the midst
of abundant liberty, there are limits on the oppo-

site sides of the imitation of Puritanism and of
Popery which loyalty to our Church forbids
good men to pass.

On the subject of what is called excessive
Bitualism, I had occasion last spring 1 to express
myself as fully and clearly as I could. I know
no better way of making my views known than
by now repeating what I announced at that
time. Is it too much to hope that any amongst
us who may hitherto have been slovenly or
negligent in acting up to the Church’s rule, will
consider how their failure gives a plausible
argument to their opponents to claim a dan-
gerous liberty on the other side, and that some at
least of those who, hurrying on to semi-Romish
ceremonial, profess an almost inordinate respect
for the Bishop’s office in the abstract, will listen
to that practical exercise of its functions, which
warns them of the danger of the course on which
they have entered ?

The phrase excessive Ritualism (I have said),
as commonly employed, hears two meanings.

“ (1) Sometimes the phrase is used for the in-
troduction into parish churches of a form of
worship always sanctioned and maintained in
our cathedrals and in many of our college
chapels. Looking to the time when an un-
adorned and almost monotonous worship pre-

1 Answer to Address of Archdeacon of Middlesex and Clergy.

vailed, and when, in many country districts at
least, the service was not only# monotonous but
slovenly, many of the clergy have thought it
their bounden duty to do what they could to in-
troduce a great change. No doubt the spirit
with which these efforts originated has done
very much of late years to invest our houses of
God with a more seemly dignity, and to give a
liveliness to our outward worship which has
been found very attractive, especially to the
young. Such changes in my judgment are only
to be deprecated if they be introduced without
proper regard to the feelings and wishes of the
parishioners, and without reference, if need be, to
the controlling authority of the Ordinary. I
quite sympathize with those who, feeling deeply
the responsibility of using all lawful means to
make our Church Services attractive, not only to
advanced Christians, but to those whom it is
their office to win from stolid carelessness, have
endeavoured to improve their Church music, and
arrange their services in some other form than
was sanctioned by the stereotyped system of our
fathers. Only I would have them remember
that it never was the intention of our Church,
as the Preface to the Prayer-book and various
Rubrics indicate, that each parish priest should
be an autocrat, independent alike of the people
whose common worship it is his privilege to

lead, and of the Bishop to whom he solemnly
promises canonical obedience. Indeed, the idea
of Common Prayer is lost if every individual
clergyman is at liberty to alter the form of
worship according to his private tastes, regard-
less of what is acceptable to the great body of
worshippers.”

“Now my own experience leads me to believe
that a great number of the disputes respecting
Ritualism which have agitated our parishes have
sprung from the inconsiderate introduction of
practices, not unlawful, nor even contrary to the
customary order of the Church as illustrated in
our cathedrals. And I believe that — even in
those lamentable cases in country districts where
such disputes have led to secessions from the
parish church, and the erection of unlicensed
buildings in which the majority of the parish-
ioners have sought a refuge from the arbitrary
proceedings of their parish priest — such evils
might have been avoided, and all parties
brought to a kindly Christian agreement, if
reference had been had to the Bishop, that he
might take order for composing differences of
opinion, sanction by authority such changes as
appeared really expedient, and restrain unde-
sirable innovations. The English laity are not
indisposed to bow to the formal decision of a
Bishop, responsible in his high position for all

his public acts, when they will not consent to he
overruled by a private clergyman who may have
come amongst them only yesterday, or have sud-
denly changed his theological oiDinions, and with
this change have arbitrarily and unexpectedly set
aside the form of common worship to which his
people were long accustomed.’ 5

“ Men may doubt how far in a Church like ours,
which so greatly encourages individual liberty,
the discretion of the parish clergy ought to be
restrained by more distinct legal enactment ; but
none, I think, will doubt that it is wise and be-
coming, and likely to promote peace and extend
their usefulness, if, where the parishioners wish it,
the clergy readily, in the exercise of their discre-
tion, refer to the authorities whom God has placed
over them.”

“ (2) But there is an excessive Bitualism of
another kind, which, within the last year, has
caused a very wide-spread alarm in the Church.
Certain persons have taken upon themselves so
to alter the whole external appearance of the
celebration of the Lord’s Supper as to make it
scarcely distinguishable from the Roman Mass,
and they endeavour on all occasions to introduce
into the other services some change of vestment
or ornament quite alien to the established English
usage of 300 years. I am not prepared to say
that these persons have not, in part at least, been

1 G

influenced by a notion that the changes they ad-
vocate will give them a hold over the careless
amongst our people through that gorgeous appeal
to the senses in which the Homan Church de-
lights.”

“It is alleged that in large towns such cere-
monial is not unpopular, and crowded congrega-
tions are pointed to as the result of its adoption.
But I would have it remembered that, amongst
the multitudes in our large towns, everything
which is eccentric or even unusual, either in
teaching or in practice, will have many admirers.
The clergymen to whom I allude would be the
last to maintain that they are sure to be right
because many run after them, or that they can
be justified in yielding against their better judg-
ment to the uninstructed zeal of those whom they
ought to lead. And if in some notable cases
churches where a very advanced ceremonial is
practised are filled, it is a serious question how
far they are filled by the parishioners for whom
they are built.”

“ I believe some have been struck by the way
in which crowds of the most ignorant of our
Homan Catholic brethren may be seen hurrying
to assist at the Mass, and have been led to con-
clude that by imitating the ceremonial of Home
you may borrow its attractiveness, without falling
into that false doctrine which is the centre and

life of its ceremonial — a dangerous experiment,
in my judgment, and one which I fear experience
will prove cannot succeed. To judge, indeed, by
certain unauthorized catechisms and manuals of
devotion, which some of the supporters of this
Ritualism have already put forth, I fear they
have not succeeded in this attempt to divorce
Roman ceremonial from deadly Roman errors.
I would earnestly entreat any of the clergy who
are disposed to try this unworthy compromise to
pause. Surely the large body of those who are
sound at heart and true to the Church of Eng-
land must pause, when the united voice of all
the Bishops warns them of their danger. If any
are already too far gone, and have deliberately
abandoned the faith of the Reformation, their
position must be to themselves very unsatis-
factory.5 ’

“ The number of those who are so committed
is, I am confident, very small. The Church of
England from the Reformation has allowed great
liberty as to the doctrine of the Sacraments ;
and, though I fear it cannot be denied that a few
are engaged in a conspiracy to bring back our
Church to the state in which it was before the
Reformation, I fully believe that most of those
who advocate what we deem an excessive Ritual
would indignantly deny that they had any such
purpose. What I should wish to urge upon all

such is, that by the common sense of the English
people all who promote these practices will be
regarded alike : their Ritual will be interpreted
by the manuals explanatory of it, to which I
have alluded ; their own parishioners will so in-
terpret it ; and when the people find the clergy
maintaining these things against the earnest re-
monstrance of the authorities of the Church,
they will be forced to believe that it is because
their pastors differ in principle from the united
body of the Bishops, who take their stand on
Scripture and the formularies, and the unbroken
teaching and practice of our great divines ; and
thus in each parish where such ceremonials
prevail the people’s allegiance to the Church
will be undermined, whether they are capti-
vated by the attractive novelties or disapprove
of them.”

“ Beginning with the use of lighted candles
during the daylight at the administration of the
Holy Communion, some men have gone on to in-
cense, to the distinctive Roman habits and to pro-
strations, which, if they mean anything, speak of
an idolatrous worship of the consecrated elements.
I feel confident that all good members of the
Church of England will pause before they en-
courage this downward course.”

“ If the introduction of these things which I
have specified, by individual clergymen on their

own responsibility, be not contrary to the letter
of our laws, it is certainly contrary to their spirit,
as well as to the authorized practice of the Church
ever since the Reformation.’ *

It was thus that I felt and spoke on this
subject in February last. Certainly the evil has
not abated since that time.

The persons who have introduced this Ritual-
ism have, as I have said, always based their
right to do so on their view of the law as con-
tained in what appears to be an ambiguously-
worded rubric. It seems probable now that the
legal question will not be set at rest without the
intervention of a judicial decision in some cause,1
such as that from the Diocese of Exeter which
is now winding its devious course of appeals
and counter-appeals through the Archbishop’s
Court towards a distant settlement. Yet it
seems difficult to see how the courts, if they
proscribe certain vestments or overt acts of
adoration, can restrain the posture, gestures,
look, manner, and tone of voice of any one who,
being resolved, without regard to authority, to
make himself as like a Roman Catholic priest
as possible, may accomplish his object by a
series of Protean changes which no law can bind.
Even the united authority of the Parliament

1 Flamank v. Simpson.

c 2

and Convocation, sanctioning a clearer explana-
tion of doubtful words in the Act of Uniformity
as to tlic Ornaments of the church and minister,
and as to the discretionary power of the Or-
dinary, may he baffled by the individual inge-
nuity of any who are not loyal to their Bishops
and their Church. It is with inventors of such
ceremonies as with teachers of unsound doc-
trine ; certainly the best arguments to use with
them are not to threaten penalties and endeavour
to overwhelm by force (for in this sense, all
Church of England men are Protestants, being
jealous, and rightly, of preserving their individual
liberty), but to reason, to remonstrate, to appeal
to their consciences, and to the love they bear
their Church.

But it is urged now that such arguments have
been used for a long time, and with great for-
bearance, and yet with no visible result. No
wonder that the patience of the Church is well-
nigh exhausted, and that other measures of
judicial trial or fresh legislation seem to be
demanded. The Bishops will certainly not fail
in their further duty where the law is clear, if
all kindly remedies are in vain. I need not say
that I shall examine and consider carefully the
reports of the churchwardens as well as those of
the clergy laid before me at this Visitation. The
churchwardens are the Bishop’s officers, bound to

present the case to him if anything affecting the
rights of the parishioners is illegally introduced
into their parish church. I would remark, how-
ever, that during the last four years, notwithstand-
ing all the feeling which has been excited, no pre-
sentments have been made to me complaining of
the services in any church which were capable of
being legally sustained, with the exception of one
case, in which a clergyman had altered the struc-
ture of his church on his own responsibility
without a faculty. Letters of Request were in
this case granted to the churchwardens on
their application, and the case has, within
the last month, been adjudicated in the Court
of Arches, the changes having been pronounced
illegal.

Let me make, however, one further remon-
strance with the favourers of these novelties.
Since I addressed the Archdeacon of Middlesex
on the subject last spring, the opinion of Sir
R. Palmer and Sir H. Cairns and other learned
lawyers has been published, declaring the legal
view of the Ritualists to be mistaken. It is
probable that a counter-opinion will soon be
produced on a case submitted to counsel by the
English Church Union. Matters certainly cannot
remain much longer as they are. If these prac-
tices are persisted in, it must be settled, even
though the settlement be incomplete, by some

controlling authority, judicial or legislative, how
far the liberty of altering the outward form of
worship thus boldly claimed is to he allowed or
stopped. At present things are done openly,
which are disclaimed by all the Bishops, and no
advanced Ritualist ventures to exhibit his pecu-
liarities when his Bishop takes part in the service.
All will allow that this is a state of things not
creditable.

The confusion has hitherto been chiefly caused
by the ambiguity of the existing law, and the
unwillingness of the great majority of Churchmen
to have the law explained by any fresh enactment.
If the Church, clergy and laity, call for it, there
is full power for fresh legislation.

“ The Church,” says the Twentieth Article,
“ hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and
authority in controversies of faith,” subject to the
all-controlling rule of following the guidance of
Holy Scripture. It is perfectly competent for each
particular Church, and therefore for the Church
of England, to alter its ritual, or explain any-
thing in its rules of worship which is ambiguous,
and also, if it shall see fit, to define with greater
accuracy the terms of its communion as to doc-
trine. Our established Church must of course
first obtain the consent of the civil Legislature
to such an alteration of the compact on which
the union of Church and State rests. In matters

concerning tlie detail of our services which do
not touch doctrine I see no difficulty in such
legislation.

Since the last great settlement at the Restora-
tion, slight changes have from time to time been
made in the Act of Uniformity, affecting the Ru-
brics or body of the Prayer-book as the exigencies
of the case required ; and these, sanctioned by Par-
liament, have been formally adopted or acquiesced
in by the authorities of the Church. Witness
the important alteration in the new Subscription
Act of 1865, and the consequent necessary
change in the rubric of the Ordination Service.
I can have little doubt myself that the time will
soon come when a well-directed public opinion
in Church and State will demand some alteration,
either in the rubrics or the actual prayers and
thanksgivings of the Burial Service ; and pro-
bably fresh powers will, before long, be given to
avoid the repetition necessarily implied in the
present practice of reading the same evening ser-
vice twice a day where there are three Sunday
services, as in so many of our town churches.
Such changes, and the adoption of some shorter
daily service more suited for busy men, as well
as of services suitable for the various occasions
of rejoicing for the harvest, or re-opening an old
church repaired, and the revision of the Lec-
tionary, have been so commonly and openly

24j

spoken of, and advocated, some of them by such
high authority, that it is probable they cannot
long be delayed. Like other useful changes, they
are sure to come when the public voice of the
members of the Church calls for them. And if
such changes are possible, neither, if it be neces-
sary, ought there to be any difficulty in more
accurately defining the meaning of those two
clauses respecting the discretionary powers of
the Bishop and Archbishop to take order for
the settlement of doubts, and respecting the
Ornaments of the Church and of the ministers
thereof, the ambiguity of which has been found
to cause so much difficulty and introduce so
much confusion in the late ritual dissensions.
My own opinion is clear that, though legisla-
tion could not settle all difficulties, yet, without
an authoritative explanation of these two clauses
in the Act of Uniformity passed by Parliament
and accepted by Convocation, we shall always be
liable to misunderstandings dangerous to the
Church's peace. It can scarcely be supposed
that on any secular matter an ambiguity of the
law proved to be so troublesome would have been
so long tolerated.

Now some believe that it would, in like manner,
be easy for the Church to guard itself in doctrine
against the imminent and often recurring danger
of an approximation to Popish or infidel error,

by frcsli definitions of the faith. No doubt our
established Church, with consent of the State,
has power to proceed to such alterations, but no
emergency which has as yet arisen calls for
this power to be used. I can hold out no hope
to those who fancy they see an easy road to
purity of faith in tampering with the great basis
of our doctrines formally adopted at the Refor-
mation, and recorded in documents which have
heen ever since referred to as the written law of
the Church. The consent neither of the Church
nor of the State will ever be obtained in our
day to the complete unsettlement which an
alteration of those laws would imply, and no
wise son of the Church of England will desire it.
We have safeguards for doctrine in our present
system quite sufficient, without plunging, in the
vain hope of better, into an unknown sea. The
Romanism of the time of the Charleses and the
second James, and the Arianism of the eight-
eenth century, proved powerless against our ex-
isting formularies. We adhere to the one faith of
the Church Catholic as embodied in our Articles
and Prayer-book, and the one great protest
against Rome, which, however darkness may now
lower for a time, has availed ever since the
Reformation.

Consider what, in matter of doctrine, is the
proper province of the Church. The Church of

England has no power of propounding new doc-
trine. And this seems by some to he made an ob-
jection to her perfectness as a Chu ^L. She has
no such power, neither has any other particular
Church, nor yet the Church Universal; and any
Church which affects to have such power, has it
only by presumptuous usurpation of what belongs
solely to God. Our doctrine is the doctrine once
for all delivered to the saints, and we remember
that there is a curse on him who adds to it,
as there is on him who takes from it.1 To pro-
pound new doctrine is the office of Christ, the
Word of God — in a fresh revelation if He
shall so will — not of His Church, which has
simply to guard what He has once revealed.

Hid the primitive Church then propound no
new doctrine, when it put forth the Creeds?
No : — Had it done so it would have acted unwar-
rantably. This is the meaning of the jealous
care with which the Eathers of Ephesus pro-
tested against additions to the Nicene Creed.

It is indeed the Church’s office, if need be,
when errors have arisen, to protest against them,
as the Creeds protested against the early heresies.
And, if errors as yet unheard of were to arise,
I know nothing to prevent our Church from pro-
testing against them, as she did at the Reforma-
tion against the subtle errors of Romanism by
1 Rev. xxii. 18, 19.

the Thirty-nine Articles. But the world is old
now. Error is indeed multiform and very pro-
lific, and it is possible that new errors may arise,
requiring new protests : it is possible, scarcely
probable ; and the old protests are sufficient for
any errors which our age has as yet heard of.
As to existing disputes, if any try to reconcile
the old errors in a somewhat varied garb with
the old protests which were expressly directed
against them in the old garb, I doubt not such
subtle reasoners would find some ingenious way
of reconciling their opinions with any new pro-
test that might be devised. If a man, I say, can
reconcile a denial of the Resurrection or of the
Divinity of Christ, or of the doctrine of Original
Sin, or a belief in the sacrifice of the Mass, with
the Thirty-nine Articles, I think any new pro-
tests would be quite useless to bind so subtle a
spirit.

It is quite true, then, that the Church cannot
make new doctrines. It is granted that practi-
cally, with us, she does not clothe old doctrines in
new forms of protest against error. And it is
maintained, that thus resting and guarding, in-
stead of inventing, she best fulfils her office as
faithful to the trust of heavenly teaching once
delivered to her.

But then we are asked by those who are
determined to disparage our system, “ You may

be right in refusing all new legislation in doc-
trine, but how does your Church judge ? ” We
answer, “ She judges all who are accused, accord-
ing to the old standards. She applies no arbitrary
shifting test as the so-called voice of the living
Church, or the uncertain judgment of an un-
defined antiquity, but turns to the clearly stated
written rule, to which all know themselves to be
amenable.,, But who judges for her ? Here there
is often misunderstanding, and I must be excused
for entering on the subject at some length.

She judges by the Church Courts, the ancient
Consistorial Court of the Bishop, or a Com-
mission issued in his name, and above these, the
Provincial Court of the Metropolitan. And as
she recognises no Patriarch to control the inde-
pendent judicature of each of her four Arch-
bishops, she says, cc the last appeal from these
must be made to a court within the realm, and
with power in all provinces of the realm, held
in the Queen’s name, but still a court judging
by the law ecclesiastical — a court indeed, which
shall symbolize and represent the union between
Church and State.” The chief Bishops sit in
this court, and learned lawyers, skilled to inter-
pret the old written law. I have sat in this Court
of Appeal oftener, I believe, than any other
living prelate, and know how its judgments
are prepared. In the last case e.g. which has

attracted so much attention,1 it is no breach of
confidence, after what has already been published
on the subject, to state, that each of the three
ecclesiastical and four lay judges was requested
to draw up a paper equivalent to a judgment of
his own. These were placed in the hands of the
presiding judge, who, comparing all, and gather-
ing the opinion of the majority, sketched the
final judgment : But this sketch was not brought
to its complete form without the most careful
consideration by all the seven judges. Day after
day they met, and pondered each sentence. Of
course those who dissented decidedly from any
count of acquittal or condemnation could not
expect to overrule the deliberate opinion of the
majority; but the utmost deference was paid to
every suggestion which they made as to the
wording of the judgment ; and after several days’
discussion that judgment was maturely adopted
which it is the fashion to call the Lord Chan-
cellor’s judgment, hut which, except in reference
to one of the three counts — that, namely, on
verbal inspiration— was acquiesced in by the
whole Court, and approved in its details by all hut
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, while sanc-
tioning the Judgment on Mr. Wilson’s saying re-
specting eternal punishment, could not agree to the
arguments by which the acquittal was enforced.

1 Williams and Wilson v. Bishop of Salisbury.

Now our Church holds that justice is more
likely to be obtained through such a Court than
by referring causes either to a General Synod of
Clergy, which, being a popular assembly, is not
well suited for a court of justice, or even to a
meeting of the Bishops. A Court of Appeal,
similar to this in all essentials, has been main-
tained ever since the settlement of the Reforma-
tion, when the usurped power of the so-called
Universal Patriarch was repudiated as encroach-
ing on the independence of a National Church.

There has been so much misunderstanding and
misrepresentation on the subject of this Judg-
ment pronounced by the Court of Appeal a few
months after my Visitation of 1862, that it has
not been confined even to our own country, and
I may he excused for not unnaturally desiring
to make the true state of the case plain. In
M. Merle D’Aubigne’s lately-published fourth
volume of his “ History of the Reformation in
Europe,” p. vi. occurs the following passage,
likely to mislead many : —

“ Henri VIII, en emancipant son peuple de la
“ suprematie papale, se proclama chef dePEglise.
“ II en est resulte que PAngleterre est de tous
“ les pays protestants celui ou l’Eglise et 1’Etat
“ se trouvent le plus intimement unis. Les legis-
“ lateurs de Tanglicanisme comprirent plus tard
“ le danger que presentait cette union et ddcla-

“ rbrent en consequence, dans le trente-septibme
“ des articles de religion {Of the Civil Magistrate ),
“ ‘ Qu’en attribuant a Sa Majeste, le roi, le gou-
“ ‘ vernement principal, ils ne donnaient pas au
“ e prince le ministere de la Parole de Diem’
“ Ceci ne voulait pas dire que le roi ne precherait
“ pas du haut de la cbaire ; nul n’y pensait ;
“ mais que la puissance civile ne se melerait pas
“ de determiner les doctrines de la Parole divine.

“ Cette precaution malheureusement n’a pas
“ suffi. II n’y a pas longtemps qu’une question
“ de doctrine s’est soulevee au sujet des Essais et
“ Revues , publies a Oxford, et la cause ayant ete
“ porte en derniere instance devant l’un des pre-
<c miers corps de l’Etat, celui-ci a prononce sur des
“ dogmes importants. Le Conseil prive a decide
“ que la negation de la pleine inspiration des
“ Ecritures, de la substitution de Christ au
“ pecheur dans le sacrifice de la croix et des con-
“ sequences irrevo cables du jugement dernier
“ n’etait pas contraire a la profession de foi de
“ l’Eglise d’Angleterre. En apprenant ce juge-
ment, les ration alistes ont triomphe ; mais un
“ nombre immense de protestations se sont fait
“ entendre de toutes les parties de la Grande-
“ Bretagne. Plein de respect pour les personnes
“ et pour les intentions des membres de ce Con-
“ seil, nous nous demandons pourtant si cet arret
“ n’est pas subversif des principes fondamentaux

“ de l’Eglise anglicane : il y a plus, s’il n’est pas
“ (nous pouvons nous tromper) une violation de
“ la Constitution du royaume, puisque les arti-
“ cles de religion en font partie. Cet acte est
“ d’autant plus grave qu’il s’ est accompli malgre
“ l’opposition, bien digne d’etre prise en grande
“ consideration, des deux principaux conducteurs
“ spirituels de l’Eglise, l’archeveque de Cantor-
“ bery, primat d’Angleterre, et l’archeveque de
“ York, l’un et l’autre membres du ConseiL”

Now this excellent man and accomplished writer
here speaks with the natural feeling of one who
has long been accustomed in his own country to
see the powers of the State openly hostile to the
preaching of that Gospel truth which he loves.
As to the facts of the celebrated Privy Council
Judgment which he describes, seeing how many
mis-statements have been circulated at home, it
is not strange that a foreigner should be misled.
I shall select, as fairly as I can, three passages
in that Judgment which embody what he alludes
to, and which set forth what was really decided.

Eirst, as to Inspiration.

“ Dr. Williams may not unreasonably contend
that the just result of these passages [alleged in
the prosecution] would be thus given : c The

Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit that lias
ever dwelt and still dwells in the Church, which

dwelt also in the Sacred Writers of Holy Scripture,
and which will aid and illuminate the minds of
those who read Holy Scripture trusting to receive
the guidance of that Spirit.’ ” — Vide “ Brodrick
and Fremantle’s Judgments,” p. 284.

“ Whatever may be the meaning of the pas-
sages included in this Article [of Charge], they
do not, taken collectively, warrant the charge
which has been made, that Hr. Williams has
maintained the Bible not to be the Word of God,
nor the Buie of Faith.” — Ibid .

Again : “ In the Sixth Article [of Beligion] it
is said that Holy Scripture containeth all things
necessary to salvation, and the books of the Old
and New Testament are therein termed canonical.
In the Twentieth Article, the Scriptures are re-
ferred to as c God’s Word written ; ’ in the Ordi-
nation Service, when the Bible is given by the
Bishop to the Priest, it is put into his hands with
these words : ‘ Take thou authority to preach the
Word of God ; ’ and in the Nicene Creed are the
words : ‘ The Holy Ghost who spake by the Pro-
phets.’ "—Ibid. p. 286.

“ This charge [against Mr. Wilson] therefore
involves the proposition : 4 That it is a contra-
diction of the doctrine laid down in the Sixth
and Twentieth Articles of Beligion, in the Nicene
Creed, and in the Ordination Service of Priests,
to affirm that any part of the Canonical Books of

the Old or New Testament, upon any subject
whatever, however unconnected with religious
faith or moral duty, was not written under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit.’ ” — Ibid.

44 Certainly this doctrine is not involved in the
statement of the Sixth Article [of Religion], that
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary
to salvation. But inasmuch as it doth so from
the revelations of the Holy Spirit, the Bible may
well be denominated 6 Holy,’ and said to be £ the
Word of God,’ c God’s Word written,’ or 4 Holy
Writ ; ’ terms which cannot be affirmed to be
clearly predicated of every statement and repre-
sentation contained in every part of the Old and
New Testament.

“The framers of the Articles have not used
the word 4 inspiration ’ as applied to the Holy
Scriptures ; nor have they laid down anything as
to the nature, extent, or limits of that operation
of the Holy Spirit.

44 The caution of the framers of our Articles
forbids our treating their language as implying
more than is expressed; nor are we warranted
in ascribing to them conclusions expressed in
new forms of words involving minute and subtle
matters of controversy.

44 After an anxious consideration of the subject,
we find ourselves unable to say that the passages
extracted from Mr. Wilson’s Essay, and which

form the subject of this Article of Charge, are
contradicted by, or plainly inconsistent with, the
Articles or Formularies to which the Charge
refers, and which alone we are at liberty to con-
sider.55— Ibid.

From this the two Archbishops dissented — not,
I presume, because they desired to hind every
member of the Church of England to M. Gaus-
sin5s Theopneustia, which I suppose is also M.
Merle d5Aubigne5s theory of the inspiration of
every word or letter of the Bible, but because
they differed from their brethren in thinking that
the accused had used language which must be
construed as inconsistent even with that tem-
perate and wise view of inspiration which the
Court considered sufficient for a Churchman
according to the teaching of the formularies.

Second, as to Imputed Righteousness.

“ The Eleventh Article of Religion, which Dr.
Williams is accused of contravening, states, e We
are accounted righteous before God only for the
merits of our Lord and Saviour J esus Christ, by
faith, and not for our own works or deservings.5
The Article is wholly silent as to the merits of
Jesus Christ being transferred to us. It asserts
only that we are justified for the merits of our
Saviour by faith, and by faith alone. We cannot
say therefore that it is penal in a clergyman to

d 2

speak of merit by transfer as a fiction, however
unseemly that word may he when used in con-
nexion with such a subject.” — Ibid. p. 285.

To this the two Archbishops assented, with
the Bishop of London and all the Judges. They
felt that no candid and well-instructed theo-
logian could maintain that that particular view
of the application of Christ’s Atonement to our
salvation which had been urged as condemnatory
of the teaching of the accused, was so clearly
asserted in the Thirty-nine Articles as to exclude
the scheme set forth, e.g. by Bishop Bull,1 and
which had been expounded and enforced by a
whole series of our most esteemed divines.

Thirdly, on Mr. Wilson’s view as to eternal
punishment.

“ We are not required, or at liberty, to express
any opinion upon the mysterious question of the

1 It may be worth while to compare Archbishop Whateley’s
statement (“ Difficulties of St. Paul,” p. 205), as showing how a
similar view to that of Bull is advocated by a divine of a very dif-
ferent school of theology. Bishop Bull’s opinions on this subject
are stated at large in his “ Examen Censurse,” an answer to certain
animadversions on his “ Harmonia Apostolica,” on the doctrine of
Justification as set forth by St. James and St. Paul. Vide espe-
cially the Eleventh Animadversion. The strength of his lan-
guage in dealing with his Calvinistic opponents goes somewhat
beyond the mere statement that what they have advanced is a
fiction. Vide “Works,” Burton’s Edition, vol. iv. p. 93 — 97.

eternity of final punishment, further than to say
that we do not find in the Eormularies to which
this Article [of Charge] refers any such distinct
declaration of our Church upon the subject as to
require us to condemn as penal the expression of
hope by a clergyman, that even the ultimate
pardon of the wicked, who are condemned in the
day of judgment, may he consistent with the
will of Almighty God.” — Ibid . p. 289.

The Court below had ruled that the words of
the Athanasian Creed, “ They that have done . . .
evil (shall go) into everlasting fire,” must be
understood in the plain literal and grammatical
sense of the English words. The Court of Ap-
peal states : —

“ Mr. Wilson has urged in his defence that
the word c everlasting,’ in the English translation
of the New Testament and of the Creed of St.
Athanasius, must be subject to the same limited
interpretation which some learned men have
given to the original words which are translated
by the English word c everlasting,’ and he has
also appealed to the liberty of opinion which has
always existed without restraint among very
eminent English divines upon this subject.” —
Ibid. p. 288.

This part of the Judgment went forth at first
from the Court as assented to by the two Arch-

bishops, the Bishop of London, and all the lay
members of the Court. His Grace the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, who had always viewed it
with dislike, afterwards, as has been before stated,
explained publicly that it was only to the ac-
quittal of Mr. Wilson, not to the ground of his
acquittal, that he assented. The Court had gone
somewhat beyond his Grace, repudiating the view
of the Judge below, who, as it appeared, would
have committed the Church beyond the written
word of the formularies viewed as cautiously re-
peating the ipsissima verba of Scripture and the old
Creeds ; and this on the most awful of mysteries —
viz. God’s mode of dealing with the millions upon
millions of souls which die without having em-
braced the true faith of Christ, and shown their
faith by a life of holiness. The Court would
seem to have pronounced against irreverent de-
ductions on such matters, deeming it best to
acknowledge the difficulties of the case as ad-
mitted by a whole series of our divines, and to
acquit Mr. Wilson, since he accepted the words
of the formularies, however difficult the Judges
might, as individuals, consider it to be, to un-
derstand or find a proper place, in the little
which God has revealed on this inscrutable
subject, for Mr. Wilson’s vague hope of a final
restitution of all.

Probably most calm reasoners acknowledge

the wisdom of reticence on such mysteries.
Symptoms still linger amongst us of a desire to
exaggerate the Scripture doctrine, even if we
can scarcely credit the report that this dreadful
argument was lately used by a clergyman to
show the necessity for missionary effort, that at
every ticking of the clock in every four-and-
twenty hours, from month to month, and year
to year, God sends a heathen soul straight to
never-ending misery. Neither has that melan-
choly sentence been as yet expunged from the
Westminster Confession of Faith still used as
the Code of Articles subscribed by Presbyte-
rians: — “ That by the decree of God for the
manifestation of His glory some men and angels
are foreordained to everlasting death.” “ The
rest of mankind,” ( i.e . besides the faithful in
Christ) “ God was pleased, according to the un-
searchable counsel of His own will, whereby
He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He
pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power
over His creatures, to pass by and to ordain
them to dishonour for their sin, to the praise of
His glorious justice.” 1

It would, in my judgment, have been lament-
able if the Court had given its sanction to
such views, as following from a fair exposition
of the Creeds and Articles. Probably M. Merle
1 Assembly's Confession of Faith, ch. iii. Art. 3 and 7.

d’ Aubigne does not approve of such exaggerations,
but their existence ought to make us tolerant of
those who are driven by horror of them into the
opposite extreme of what we deem too complacent
a view of God’s mercy.

We have seen how ultra-Calvinists meet the
difficulty of this subject by a shocking exhibition
of the character of the God of love. Homan
Catholics, and all who believe in purgatory,
escape from the difficulty in another way. Some
amongst ourselves have supposed they found the
solution in metaphysical speculations as to the
meaning of the word “ eternal,” which, I con-
fess, I have never been able to understand.
Mr. Wilson thought to solve all by the indul-
gence of an indefinite hope. Archbishop Til-
lotson,1 as I understand him, had urged that,
though God would surely keep his promises, He
might not be equally bound to adhere to His
threatenings. Bishop N ewton,2 arguing the whole
subject at length, ventures on the statement that
“ Bepentance is not impossible even in Hell.”
These speculations seem to me to be all vain, and
some of them very dangerous. But it is im-
portant to bear in mind that these two questions
are distinct — 1st. What variety of opinion on

1 “Works,” London, 1728, vol. i. p. 321 ; Sermon xxxv.

2 “Works,” London, 1787, vol. vi. Dissertation lx. On the
final state and condition of men. Cf. especially pp. 362, 369.

complicated and mysterious subjects does our
Church not distinctly condemn. And 2d. What
is the full, true exposition of the doctrine of
Scripture and the Church, as deduced by the
best helps God has given us through our reason,
enlightened by His Spirit.

For myself, my own view is now what I have
long since published, that the Gospel revelation
does distinctly tell of a never-ending privation
of God’s favour for the lost ; but I wish never
to reason subtlely from the words of Scripture
which speak of this mystery, nor to advance any
theory which shall seek to explain what God
has shrouded in darkness. I must announce
what I find written in the Bible, if I would be
faithful to the souls committed to me; but I
feel the awfulness of the mystery, and desire
to be very reverent in treating of it. The de-
cision of the Privy Council, while it refused to
declare Mr. Wilson’s statement penal, and left
the matter open to the various opinions which
have always existed in the Church, says not one
word antagonistic to what I hold to be the sober,
scriptural view, to which, brethren, you will, in
my judgment, be wise to adhere in all your
preaching.

What I have given is, I conceive, a fair his-
tory of some important points in the particular
Judgment, which has of late been continually

brought forward, as showing that the Church of
England is in bondage, because all ecclesiastical
causes in the last resort are subject to the Supreme
Court of Appeal held in the Queen’s name.
If these pages meet M. Merle D’Aubigne’s eye,
he will, I think, allow that his account is likely
to convey an erroneous impression. He must
have taken it from the exaggerations of excited
partizans.

But the whole subject of these Appeals has of
late been so violently contested, that it requires
further thought. Observe, then, that in all non-
established Churches, as well as those which are
established, the State has the right to step in and
decide ecclesiastical causes whensoever they in-
volve temporal consequences.1 The difference in an
established Church is this : that the courts of the
Church, according to the contract of establish-
ment, are recognised afe courts of the Bealm, and
their decisions are held to be binding in law as
to these temporal consequences. Thus an estab-
lished has so far the advantage over a non-
established Church, in the independence of its
courts. There is great confusion on this sub-
ject in many minds ; the assertion being con-

1 This is illustrated in the recent appeal to the Privy Council
from the Courts of the Cape Colony respecting the action of the
Presbytery of the Dutch Reformed Church in a case of alleged
unsound doctrine.

43 -

tinually made that the courts, if they can be so
called, of a non-estahlished Church are more in-
dependent.

But the Bishop’s Court in the Church of Eng-
land is recognised as a court of the realm ; so
the Archbishop’s. There is no interference of
civil courts with these unless they overstep their
province, when the regulative power of the
Queen’s Bench would apply to them as to any other
courts. But then seeing that the National Church
is to he one, and that the old merely ecclesiastical
system has not provided courts for National hut
only for Provincial Churches, how is the unity
of jurisdiction to he secured in our National
Church ? To whom is there to be an appeal ?
At the Reformation it was held that the appeal
should he to the Sovereign, as indeed had often
been contended before. Then the Sovereign
acted in these matters through Chancery, as is
still the case in Ireland: Now, in England,
the Sovereign acts through the Privy Council.
A court is established to receive appeals, which
shall represent the Sovereign, and shall be aided,
at least in cases under the Church Discipline
Act, by the three chief prelates of the Church.

I maintain now, as I have done elsewhere,
1st. That the particular arrangement by which
these principles are now upheld in England
was most deliberately adopted, after careful

evidence, on the recommendation of a Commis-
sion, in which Archbishops Howley and Vernon,
and Eishops Elomfield and Kaye served.

2. That the arrangement is in accordance with
the principle laid down at the Reformation,
for I know of no evidence that there never was
a time when practically the decision of such
appeals was in the hands of ecclesiastics alone,
without the aid of laymen.

3. That it is consistent with the practice from
the Reformation down to this time.

4. That it is a great improvement on the old
Court of Delegates, for which it was substituted.

5. That it is not easy to devise a plan for
better maintaining the independence of the
Church consistently with the controlling power
of the Sovereign, Supreme in Church and State.

The courts of the Church are recognised as
courts of the Realm, and are subjected at last to
the review of a peculiar court, in which the
chief officers of the Church have seats either as
assessors or as judges.

6. That, while it is allowed that this Court,
like any other which exists, may he improved,
and that the whole mode of procedure in eccle-
siastical courts calls for revision, yet no plan for
superseding this Court, or even for its reconstruc-
tion, has been suggested, which has obtained the
general approval of the leaders of opinion either

in Church or State. And this is the more remark-
able, seeing that two distinct occasions have oc-
curred, at considerable intervals — on the decisions
of the Gorham case, and of the appeals of Messrs.
Williams and Wilson — when the whole subject of
its constitution has been carefully discussed and
reviewed, with the hope of its being reconstructed.
I mention all this, because it is often asserted
that the Church suffers from the nature of its
courts. On the contrary, I hold it gains. And I
do not believe any other plan of judicature, very
different in its general principles, can be sug-
gested which so well unites the independence
of the Church in its maintenance of its own
ecclesiastical law and the proper controlling
power of the Sovereign. The fault, indeed, as I
have intimated, lies, not in the constitution of
the courts, but in the forms of proceeding,
which might well be remedied without any great
change.

No one, I believe, whose opinion is of any
value, wishes our ecclesiastical courts to be
filled by clerics alone. The long-established
system of judges trained for their office, exer-
cising it in the name of the Bishops and Arch-
bishops, and according to ecclesiastical law, is
the best for the inferior courts ; and then in the
Einal Court (which cannot be held in the name
of any ecclesiastical authority, since it is an

appeal from one or other of the Metropolitans
of the National Church, the highest hut co-
ordinate authorities which the Church recog-
nises), it would seem right that there ought to
he a union of the highest ecclesiastical and
highest legal functionaries, still hound to judge
according to the Church’s peculiar law.

And here, before this subject is dismissed, it
must he acknowledged to he undoubtedly a result
of the present system of our ecclesiastical courts,
whether inferior, or courts of appeal, that it is
very difficult to obtain a condemnation of any
one accused of false doctrine. The only cases
of such condemnation that occur to me are,
that of Mr. Stone, under Bishop Porteus, for
denying the Divinity of Christ, and Mr. Oakley,
under Bishop Blomfield, for claiming to hold
all Boman doctrine, both in the Consistorial
Court of London ; and that of Mr. Heath, before
the Privy Council.

The reason of this difficulty I take to be that
the Judges, without absolutely committing them-
selves to it in the abstract, have practically
acted on the principle that they must be guided
entirely by the written law of the Church, known
and understood and acquiesced in by all who are
subject to their authority. The result is, that
nothing but a proved flat contradiction of the
formularies leads to a condemnation. And, as

it scarcely ever happens that any clergyman who
is a teacher of erroneous doctrine has thrown
off all regard for the formularies, hut each
rather flatters himself that they may he not un-
fairly interpreted to admit his peculiar opinion,
the result necessarily is very favourable to an
almost unlimited liberty of discussion, pro-
vided the Articles and Prayer-book be not for-
mally contradicted. I will not enter into any
argument as to how far the good or evil re-
sulting from this practice preponderates. Cer-
tainly it is difficult to see how justice could be
done if we were subjected to any laws other than
those which are clearly defined and known ; and
my own opinion is that, in an age when truth
and sound doctrine are far more likely to be pro-
moted by fair argument and kindly direction
than by judicial penalties, the result is one in
which we may fairly acquiesce.

The orthodoxy of the Church of England
must be manifested by the faithfulness of the
preaching of her ministers, and the reflection of
the great Christian doctrines which they exhibit
in their 'Jives ; and these are secured far more
through the kindly and hallowing influence which
flows from elder to younger, from teachers to
taught, from rulers to ruled, than by any ser-
vile fear of penalties. 0, my friends, all of you
endeavour thus to spread the Gospel of your

Master. Preach the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully
in your sermons and in your lives ; alas ! there is
far too little of Him in most of the sermons which
we hear. Preach Him faithfully and wisely,
knowing the wants, the peculiar wants of the
generation with which you have to deal; and
you will thus help to keep the Church pure far
more effectually than can he done hv the deci-
sions of any legal tribunals.

As an illustration of the actual state of things
which exists amongst us, I will point to the
undoubted fact that, within the memory of most
of us, there have sprung up in our eldest Univer-
sity two schools of theology diametrically opposed
to each other, both of them causing very great
alarm amongst us. It is impossible for the
majority of fair men to consider the system of
either as a satisfactory statement of what is the
teaching of our Church. It is, in my judgment,
the plain tendency of the teaching of the one
school to represent Christianity as a human phi-
losophy; of the other, as a superstition. I do
not say that the leaders of these schools mean
this, or are conscious of it ; hut I tremble for the
consequences of either system fairly developed.

N ow it is notorious — and may therefore be said
without offence — that two brother professors,
greatly esteemed and distinguished, are the
leaders of these schools. Neither of these men,

I venture to think, could our Church have re-
tained in its communion if its judicature had been
conducted on other principles than those I have
described. Different minds will view the actual
result differently as a gain or as a loss. Probably
no other Church on earth could have retained
them both, and no other would have been willing
charitably to hope, till they positively declared
the contrary, that they are one with each other
and with us in their love and veneration for the
protecting ever-present power of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and in loyalty for the Deformed Church
which they seem so anxious to alter. Por
myself, I will not hesitate to say that, on the
whole, I think it well we have retained them,
and that I trust the great power they possess to
spread amongst us what I feel to be erroneous doc-
trine may be counteracted by other influences, and
even by the practical lessons of their own lives.

One of these eminent men has even given the
sanction of his great name, within the last twelve
months, to a mode of explaining the Thirty-nine
Articles which I had hoped was condemned and
repudiated twenty-five years ago.1 Most of the
old strenuous advocates of this system of in-
terpretation have, I suppose, abjured it as un-
tenable, having long since joined the Church of
Rome, with the doctrines of which I understand
1 Tract, No. XC., reprinted, 1866.

it (strange theory) to profess that there is no
antagonism in the Thirty-nine Articles. Most
plain men have thought for centuries that the
Articles were written chiefly for the purpose (as
history would lead us to expect) of protesting
against the doctrines of Rome. Thrice has this
theory appeared in England — first, when broached
in Charles the Eirst’s time, in the days of Pan-
zani’s mission, and Eranciscus a Sancta Clara’s
treatise;1 second, when propounded by Dr. New-
man in 1840 ; and third, within the last twelve
months. Twice has it been repudiated. I do not
think it is likely to have better success now. It
is no less alien to the feelings of Churchmen than
Mr. Wilson’s theory for his peculiar interpretation
of the Articles against which its last advocate
protests. Give up the Articles altogether if you
will, but do not insult our understandings by
professing to accept, and yet altogether subvert-
ing them.

Now both of the earnest and greatly respected
Professors I have alluded to will probably be
allowed to fulfil their course in life without
molestation from prosecution. My judgment is
that, on the whole, this is well. No doubt

1 For a short and clear account of Bishop Montague’s intrigues,
Panzani’s Mission, and Davenport’s, or Franciscus & Sancta Clara’s
hook, “ Deus Natura Gratia,” vide Hallam’s “ Constitutional
History,” Yol. II. chap. viii. p. 94 — 98.

they will, in opposite directions, leave a great
mark on the age. Let us hope, for themselves
and their followers, that the personal holiness
of the one, and the ardent love of truth and
unwearied practical devotion to his duty of the
other, may be the elements which may perma-
nently affect their generation. The age greatly
needs both lessons. May the memory of their
lives thus teach, when the peculiarities of their
theology have been long forgotten.

But Sursum corda — away above the mists of
theological controversy — sursum corda — let the
Church look to higher things — up from the
painful personality of venturing to speak or
think hardly of revered names ; up from the din
and hard words and heartburnings, and even
the learning and subtlety, of controversy, to the
throne of God, around which myriads of saints,
who were much estranged in their earthly war-
fare, will meet at last through Christ. Amid
the clashing of human opinions, God grant that
His truth may rise triumphant. Holiness and
truth — try the Church’s work by these : My
young friends and brethren, to you I speak
especially — zealous for your party, try your
own work and your own selves by these.

Yet one important point still remains, which
ought to be considered in reference to the gene-
ral position of our Church. It might, indeed,

e 2

have been that we of the Episcopal Church in
England and Ireland were so completely the sole
depositories of the one faith of Christ, that we
were hound to separate ourselves in rigid exclu-
siveness from all other Christians, faithful alone
with the whole world against us. At times our
divines have seemed to think that this was the
isolated position which we were called to hold.
But, thank God, on all sides more kindly and
Catholic and truly Christian thoughts have
made rapid progress amongst us. We rejoice to
be in complete outward communion with the
great Protestant Episcopal Church of the United
States of America, as with our brethren of the
Episcopal Church in Scotland ; and we hail steps
lately announced for bringing us, with our
American brethren, into closer fellowship with
the Lutheran Episcopal Church of Sweden. Still
more is it a cause for deep thankfulness that our
Church is spread out of our own islands into
some forty-five colonial dioceses, through which
are borne the loved ministrations of our Prayer-
book wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has dis-
persed itself over the habitable globe.

Our Colonial Church is indeed dear to us :
its rapid progress during the last thirty years
is a sign that God in His mercy has infused
new life and energy into the Mother Church
at home, and made it more fully to under-

stand that it is intended to be world-wide in
its catholicity. And if one dark cloud hangs
lowering in the otherwise bright horizon, and
one diocese speaks to us of trouble and un-
rest and the shaking of Christian faith, we
accept the trial, and are not in despair. Por
myself I deeply regret that, long before these
troubles had assumed their present proportion,
the Bishop of Natal did not follow the first sug-
gestions of his own better nature, when he felt
and avowed the incongruity of the opinions
toward which his convictions were irresistibly
carrying him with the nature and duties of his
office. I united with the overwhelming majority
of my episcopal brethren in urging on him
that, for the peace of the Church and for his
own sake, he ought to complete his intention
and resign. He conceived, on further reflection,
that circumstances had changed, and I have no
authority to condemn, though I deplore, the
decision at which he then arrived. Again,
without blaming any one, I regret that when
he was proceeded against, as seemed inevitable
and right, the trial should not have been
such as could command the sympathies of all
impartial men, and bring it to a judicial
conclusion which could be accepted by the
Church. But, no doubt, the difficulties were
great. Meanwhile the Church suffers, both by

the original cause of offence and by many other
intricate and much-disputed questions which
have arisen to perplex the whole subject. No
doubt God, in His good time, will find the solu-
tion ; and we should be ungrateful if, alarmed *
by this one cloud, we did not thankfully rejoice
at the steady progress of our Colonial Church ;
zealously exert ourselves to help it, and strive in
every way to cement that union which we hope
will long bind it to ourselves both in the profes-
sion of one faith, and — as I venture also strongly
to advise, while the Colonies remain united to
the mother country — in the acknowledgment of
one discipline.

But, besides this complete outward communion
with the various branches of the Reformed Epi-
scopal Church throughout the world, no doubt
also it is a remarkable sign of the times that
hearts in the Church of England are yearning
more than formerly for such union as can be
attained with other Christian bodies from which
we are kept separate by outward discipline, or
important differences of belief and practice. I
am not going to examine minutely this phe-
nomenon of the growth amongst us of a strong
desire for such unity ; but a few remarks on
it seem indispensable.

We do not forget how desirable it is that
Christendom should be one and at peace with

itself. We long and pray for this peace and
union; but we want no hollow peace, still less
a peace which shall be purchased by sacrificing
our liberty and God’s truth. Thus we feel
ashamed when told of members of our noble
Reformed Church1 going, cap in hand, to seek for
some slight recognition from that old usurping
power — so unlike the gentle truth-loving Church
of the Apostles, of which it vaunts itself the
sole representative — which slew Latimer and
Ridley and Cranmer and Hooper in the old time,
because they would not surrender God’s truth,
and which certainly values the pure Gospel now
at as low a rate as of old. And we feel some
satisfaction in learning how these advances were
coldly rejected by the old haughty spirit which
they seek in vain to propitiate.

It pains us also deeply to find men labouring,
as I noted above, to show that the Church of the
Reformation has, after all, by some felicitous
accident, escaped from being reformed ; that, if
we could only see it, there is nothing really Pro-
testant in the Thirty-nine Articles, and nothing
really Romish in the Decrees of Trent. If this
were so, language must be a still more uncertain
vehicle of man’s thoughts than all acknowledge
it to be.

1 Vide Manning’s u Reunion of Christendom,” 1866. Appen-
dix, I. II. III.

But, indeed, there is no sign that this mode of
making peace with Borne is possible. Borne is
too wise ; and I think I may say for at least
ninety-nine out of every hundred of English
Churchmen, that they are too wise also. Arch-
bishop Laud’s saying holds true still : that there
can be no thought of union with Borne till she
becomes other than she is.1 Not that I would
stand apart from our Boman Catholic fellow-
subjects, where we can, without compromise of
principle, unite in good works. There are crowds
of very low and ignorant Boman Catholics
amongst us. The Boman Catholic population
of England would be nothing were it not for
the Irish immigration :2 We regard these with
feelings of Christian brotherhood. They are our
fellow-citizens, living in our parishes; in many
ways entitled, from their very poverty, to our
sympathy and help. We know that their priests
exercise over them, in their rude and ignorant
condition, a power to which none else can attain.
We desire that their children should be taught
good habits ; that these colonies of Bomanists
should, for their own sake as for ours, cease
to be the plague, and distress, and disgrace of
every neighbourhood in which they are settled.

1 Vide Laud’s Diary, 17th August, 1633.

2 By the “ Religious Census ” there were 35 Roman Catholic
Chapels in London, with 24,355 sittings.

Here surely is abundant opportunity for such
united works of Christian kindliness towards
Homan Catholics as involves no compromise of
principle. This is a practical way in which our
craving for union may have free vent. And the
true work of the union of Christendom will go
further. Holding the pure Gospel ourselves, we *
shall not be unwilling, but most ready in every
practicable way — while we deplore our separation
in so many essentials — to unite where we can,
as fellow-citizens and fellow-Christians, even with
those who overlay the Gospel with great errors,
in doing each other good for Christ’s sake.

The same also may be said of those far more
intelligible projects of reunion which apply to
our separation from the great bodies of what are
commonly called Orthodox Dissenters. In times
of dangerous combination against the faith, there
is always a natural drawing towards union
amongst those who burn for its defence. It was
so when Sancroft1 advised his clergy to draw
nearer to the Nonconformists, while Homanism
threatened to overrun the land. Those who
differ much may be fighting the same great
battle. Great things have been done for the
truth by the combination of their efforts; as,
e.g ., it would have been a loss for the Church
of Christ, if the learned storehouse of Lardner
1 Vide my Charge of 1862, p. 54.

had not been at hand with the weapons which
were needed by the masterly fence and sharp
logic of Paley, though Lardner was not even
what we can call an orthodox dissenter. Robert
Hall was prized and honoured by one of the best
of my predecessors, and by all those other good
men who felt, as the Prench Revolution deepened
and threatened to plunge the world in blank
Atheism, that it was no time for division amongst
those who loved Christ, while the devil’s work
was being done so assiduously, and on so great a
scale, by Christ’s enemies. It is thus that good
men feel when, in distant missionary stations,
brought face to face with heathenism — not
curious to inquire into their grounds of dif-
ference when they think of the wide gulf which
separates them from those who know not Christ.
It was thus in India that that true servant ot
Christ, whose mysterious death the Church is
now mourning, proved himself even during his
short Episcopate to he the Bishop and leader,
not of the members of his own Church only,
hut of all Christians in his diocese.

This were, indeed, some real progress towards
the reunion of Christendom : Beginning at home,
first to repair the consequences of that great mis-
take of the last century which separated from us
the Wesleyan s ; then to try to win back the Non-
conformists, who probably never would have left

us had it not been for the levity with which
Charles II. forgot, in his restoration, the pro-
mises of his adversity, and the asperity with
which Sheldon sought to impose a uniformity of
thought, as well as outward worship, on men
whom he did not care to conciliate, but some of
whom were the great champions of pure doctrine
and a saintly life, with whose aid, in that un-
believing and dissolute age, he could ill dispense.
We have, happily, within the last two years
mended the bad work of those days by the
change of our form of Subscription.1 It would be
well if dissenters would reconsider now the rela-
tions in which they stand to us. But, naturally
as we long for such reunions, they are very diffi-
cult to achieve : separations are easy to make —
most difficult to repair. Advancing centuries
establish important interests in the seceding
bodies, difficult to deal with : Those born in
dissent have a historical position to maintain :
Eresh political and theological combinations
arise, and all things tend to this conclusion
— better not to make any forced efforts after
amalgamation; if it come, it will be a great
blessing; but better work on, each of you in
your own way, in a spirit of Christian love,

1 I find, from my own observation, that the Clerical Subscrip-
tion Act of 1865, 28 and 29 Yictoria, c. 122, has been received
by many as a great boon.

uniting where you can, without ever sacrificing
principle ; each before God following distinctly
the leadings of his conscience.

And then as to schemes of union with the
Oriental Churches : I am sure I wish they could
come to anything. It would he satisfactory in-
deed to see the Churches of the early centuries,
the venerable Patriarchates, the nurseries of
great Pathers, returning to the vigour and
earnestness of their youth, and prizing that
Gospel which it is the great privilege of some of
them to possess written in the beautiful clearness
of their own ancient tongue. When we think
what blessings the West has received from the
East, both of secular and religious civilization,
no educated European hut will desire to repay
part of the debt, and concur in any schemes by
which the Christian East may be benefited.

But when we come to projects of reuniting
Christendom, we are not to be hurried on by
mere feelings of romance. Of course we are
not such children as to suppose that the real
unity of Christendom is to be secured by clergy
in Borne, Constantinople, and London wearing
similarly-coloured stoles. We must ask calmly,
but very seriously, how far these Churches are
exerting themselves to escape from that idola-
trous worship of the Lord’s mother which for
centuries has made Christianity in those regions

despicable in the eyes both of Jews and of
Mahometans. We must ask, also, what symp-
toms they are showing of a returning desire to
teach the people out of the Holy Scriptures.
There can be no union on our part which over-
looks the deadly sins of idolatry and the con-
cealment of the Scriptures.

Do I then urge all, and especially you, my
younger brethren, to rouse yourselves from all
romantic visions, and to settle your whole
thoughts on the dull daily details of your parish
life ; to think of the particular acre only in the
Church’s heritage which God has given each of
you to cultivate, and not of Christ’s empire reach-
ing, at least in nominal allegiance, over East and
West ? This were hard indeed. It is well that you
should take interest in all that can be done for the
benefit of the Church Universal; and noble visions
of the triumphs of Christ in distant lands will only
the better cheer and nerve you in the daily task
at home. I would not desire you to lose your
interest in such schemes, but to temper them
all with allegiance to your own Church, and
a sober, though ardent, love of Christ’s pure
truth.

Such thoughts of the reunion of Christendom
may well mingle with those generous aspirations,
which are, I trust, growing amongst all of you,
to spread the Gospel by Missionary efforts in

heathen lands. What the Church of England
has done during the present century for Missions
is a plain note of God’s Spirit quickening a holy
zeal amongst us ; our Church prays, more heartily
than heretofore, “ Thy kingdom come;” and the
coming of Christ’s kingdom will certainly bring
with it the reunion of all Christendom, as well
as the end of Jewish prejudice and the enlighten-
ing of the dark heathen. Well then may we
refresh our minds in the midst of daily trials
with the vision of the time when Christ’s people
of all lands and of every race shall be all one,
even as He and His Eather are One.1

To review, then, our present position. We are
ministers of a Church which adheres to the an-
cient Apostolical form of government, not with
the tenacity of a narrow exclusiveness, forcing us
to look with suspicion and coldness on the great
Protestant communities abroad, or on Noncon-
formists at home. We prize and thank God for
this outward bond which — while it is some sort
of link, however slight, with the unreformed
Churches of our own day, whose errors we de-
plore and would gladly help in mending — ties us
also to the great mediaeval Churches, and the
noble spirits who in them spread light in the
midst of the thickly-gathering darkness of gross
error : we feel, too, that it carries us up in
1 St. John xvii. 21.

outward relationship to the struggling Churches
of the fourth and earlier centuries, and the
great Fathers, whose writings formed in those
days the best literature, not of the Church alone,
but of the Empire. It is thus we prize the
Catholic element in our own government.

Again, our discipline (with all its faults) is the
old primitive discipline of the Church Catholic,
through the courts of Bishop and Metropolitan.
Because we are an established Church these are
recognised as courts of the Bealm. From all
courts of the Bealm there ought of necessity to
be a direct Appeal to the Sovereign. The Sove-
reign exercises this Appeal through her highest
law officers, assisted by the highest prelates,
according to ecclesiastical law.

Again, our Church, whatever it may have been
in past times, has learned, by the lessons of a
long and sometimes bitter experience, to become
the most tolerant of all Churches — not tolerant
of denials of the faith, or gross superstitious
additions ; but very tender in dealing with those
who, often almost unwittingly, are the dissemi-
nators of error. It seeks to banish and drive
away all erroneous and strange doctrine, not by
pains and penalties and loud denunciations, but
by sound argument convincing the gainsayers ; as
to the men themselves who seem to be leading us
towards popery or infidelity, and as to their own

personal faith, believing all things, hoping all
things, enduring all things,1 but calling them to
ponder well the Gospel simplicity of our Services,
and the long catalogue of the works of divines
who have maintained and explained those great
truths to which the Prayer-book witnesses. Thus,
in the midst of agitations and alarms, while faint
hearts are fluttering, we learn in the faithful
spirit of prayer in confidence to possess our
souls, knowing that Christ is with us, and will
maintain His truth.

Meanwhile, again, we know, that it is not
by the privileges of a well-ordered constitution
and a devout ceremonial, or holy services ; not
even by the due and often-repeated reverential
administration of the Sacraments of Christ ; nor
by the priceless inheritance of an open Bible and
the most orthodox professions of faith derived
from it — -we know that not by privileges, but by
the zealous discharge of duty as in Christ’s sight,
is a Church proved not only to have a name to
live, but by the Holy Spirit’s help to be really
living. Therefore our eyes stretch onward and
around us to the boundless field of duty.

Our Church has to help souls of all degrees
and characters to serve God in Christ. It has
to battle with the gigantic evils of a complicated
civilization, so depressing masses of the poor
1 Cor. xiii. 7.

physically as to render them too debased to he
touched by any common elevating influences. It
has to teach the very young, for the children of
the great body of the very poor must he taught
by our Church’s exertions, or practical experience
shows they will not be taught at all. It has to
watch against the growing coarseness of early
manhood, estranging the youth of our parish
schools from the lessons of their childhood. It
is ours cautiously to use every device whereby
we may hold our lads through their dangerous
age ; and the great ordinance of Confirmation is
at hand to give us access both to them and their
sisters.

But the Church’s mission is not only to the
poor. It has a vast field in guiding and fortify-
ing with Christian principle, against its peculiar
and subtle temptations, the homely common sense
of the middle classes ; and it must not forget the
acutest intellects engaged in the whirl of busi-
ness, in the higher regions of commerce, or in
politics, law, medicine, literature, or science, nor
the young men in our Universities and Inns of
Court. These are members of the Church, en-
titled, and inclined if they be wisely dealt with,
to seek the helps which the Church can give
through Christ. It has to leaven with Christian
principles all the various members of those upper
classes of society, in which the insidious temp-

tations of an easy life are so apt to outweigh the
thousand religious privileges of their position,
and make them live practically without God.
Who is sufficient for these things ? Yet in the
zealous endeavour to discharge our duty to the
best of the power which God has given us — in
this is found the only safe test of the Church’s
life. All these various classes our Reformed
Church has to influence by the living principles
of the pure Gospel of Christ. And this brings
us to our own practical work.

It is well known that, some time after my last
Visitation, the clergy and laity of this diocese
united in one great effort, under an urgent sense
of the disparity between the amount of popu-
lation in London and the means of grace sup-
plied. They felt that the rapid growth of our
people was out of all proportion with the means
adopted for teaching them, even if there had not
been a vast mass of poor congregated in our
parishes in times of past neglect. It was there-
fore resolved at once to recommence the efforts
made from time to time by Bishop Blomfield, and
to try to organize them on a more extended scale
as to the agencies which should be employed.
The details of this scheme have constantly been
brought before the public. It has, in its first
operations, been chiefly directed to placing ad-
ditional clergymen and lay agents, with some

C 7

mission station, used at once as chapel and
schoolroom, in conventional districts of over-
grown parishes : It has helped on the ultimate
separation of these districts by purchasing sites,
and liberally assisting individuals, where they
wrished such aid, to raise the requisite sums for
the erection of new churches, to be endowed hy
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Let me say,
once for all, that to develop and mature this
scheme has required, and for the next seven
years will require, such an amount of patient
and laborious attention, not only to the general
condition of the diocese, but to the minute details
of its parishes, and such an amount of commu-
nication, oral and written, with incumbents and
others, as would fully employ the energies of the
whole statf of any great public office. But this
labour, which it would have been totally impos-
sible for myself, or any Bishop, consistently with
the regular administration of his diocese, to
undertake, has been cheerfully and successfully
borne by a Committee of laymen and clergymen,
who, assisted by a very moderate staff of paid
assistants, have worked as laboriously in this
matter, during the last three years, as if it were
their distinct professional business. Obviously,
those of the clergy on that Committee who pre-
side over important parishes, have not been able
to give us much more than their invaluable

f 2

advice ; some clergymen, who have lighter paro-
chial duties, have given up to us that comparative
leisure which they might well have considered
that they had, by labours of former years, earned
a right to spend in more attractive fields of their
Master’s service. But to the laymen who have
aided us the thanks of all of us, the clergy, are
especially due. Men of all ranks, who with a
thousand other claims, have made time to work
for us diligently, day by day, in the office, and
have visited all parts of the diocese, that, by
personal inspection of poverty-stricken districts,
and personal intercourse with incumbents and
other residents, they might better understand
what it was wise to undertake in each neigh-
bourhood. I will not say more of these kindly
services than this — [First, that I believe they
have been used by us in accordance with the
system both of the Church of the Apostolic
age and of our own National Church, which,
by the offices of churchwarden and sidesman,
recognises a distinct sphere in which the laity
are called to aid the clergy, lest their spiritual
work should suffer from their serving tables :
And, secondly, that such self-denying work,
from the very nature of the scenes to which
it introduces our lay friends, is sure to deepen
their Christian sympathies, and enable them,
by God’s blessing, better to prize the Gospel

in their own hearts, and appreciate the duty
of spreading its influence amongst their own
neighbours and dependents.

The work accomplished directly by the Bishop
of London’s Lund during the three years of its
operation may be estimated in round numbers as
follows : —

£273,000 promised, of which £183,790 has
been paid; 106 additional Clergymen added to
the staff of the diocese, with 70 paid lay assist-
ants; 29 Mission stations secured; besides 16
rooms rented. Votes have been passed to assist
the building of 46 permanent Churches, 23
Schools, 9 Parsonages, and for 20 sites of
Churches, 21 sites of Schools, and 13 of Par-
sonages.

The whole number of churches consecrated
since my last Visitation has been 53, all new
except seven, which were rebuilt and enlarged.
The number of licensed clergy cited to this
Visitation, as compared with 980 in 1862, is
1,127. It is very important to remark that the
efforts in direct connexion with the Pund are
but a small part of the work of this kind now
doing in the diocese. In no instance has the
Pund contributed more than £1815 to any
church. In fact, I have returns to shew1 that
during the four years since my last Visitation,

1 Vide Appendix.

for building* churches and schools, and paying
Curates and Scripture Headers, independently
of what has been done by the Bishop’s Fund,
no less a sum than £853,000 has been contri-
buted in the diocese by benevolent individuals
and societies ; while £530,000 of capital has been
expended by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in
endowments, and in otherwise satisfying local
claims in this diocese during the same term
Truly the real progress of the work of Christ
among us is not to be estimated by money ;
truly also, whatever has been done already is
far short of what requires to be done. But let
us thank God for what is done, and take courage
for fresh exertions. Even after making full
allowance for all that is done by other reli-
gious bodies without the Church, we still need
325 new Clergy, with a proportionate staff of
Scripture Headers, and 194 new Churches, before
London is brought to that scale of arrangements
for religious instruction which our statistical in-
quiries have suggested. And this is to be noted,
that the calculations of Nonconformists as to the
amount of spiritual destitution, most carefully
conducted, do not materiallv differ from our own.
Much has been done by Local Associations cover-
ing large areas. It is very desirable where such
extended action is impossible, that smaller asso-
ciations should be formed in connexion with indi-

vidual churches. I cannot hut note, also, with
thankfulness, the system which has been adopted
in some wealthy parishes of affiliating a poorer
district. May God stir up the hearts of all who
have as yet done nothing or little for this great
work, to take the part in it which their interest
in London makes a debt they owe to their fellow-
citizens. Abundant are the other works in which
we must labour for the physical improvement of
our people, but we dare not forget that they have
souls within their bodies, and that the welfare
of both united must be the object of all true
Christian efforts.

It has been my endeavour, in conducting the
operations of the Bishop of London’s Bund, to
interfere as little as possible with the existing
diocesan societies ; for indeed our whole object
has been to add a new effort to those already
existing ; and, though the subscriptions of several
societies have for a time suffered, there is reason
to hope that this may be only for a time. Indeed
it will be found that the Bishop of London’s
Bund requires the assistance of these societies
for the completion of the objects it undertakes.
To the Diocesan Church Building Society the
Bishop of London’s Bund owes it origin. The
efforts made by that society soon after my last
Visitation to call attention to the facts mentioned
in my Charge roused the sympathy of the diocese,

and much of the work of the Bishop’s Fund in the
-department of church-building has been con-
ducted through that society. We cannot dispense
with a central office of some kind, such as it
affords, where all the accumulated information of
past experience is accessible respecting the best
way of surmounting the difficulties that stand in
the way of building a new church, and where also
full information is attainable as to all that has
been done in this direction during the last five-
and-twenty years. The mother society is working
as the handmaid of the Fund : and in this capacity
it imperatively claims our support during the
remainder of the time for which the Committee
of the Fund is designed to last.

The Diocesan Home Mission, also, has been a
most assiduous helper to the Fund. Its plan
of sending missionary clergy appointed by the
Bishop, with the consent of incumbents, to
districts where the ordinary parochial machinery
is quite inadequate to meet the wants of a dense
population, and of calling on these clergy, as
the condition of their appointment, to undertake
such distinctly missionary duties as, till a few
years ago, were scarcely supposed to fall within
the range of a clergyman’s avocations, has been
generally approved.

If any one desires to have a clear statement of
the melancholy condition of the long-neglected

portions of the first Christian city in the world,
and the efforts we are making to remedy the evil,
let him read the last report of the Diocesan
Home Mission. There are passages in it which
could not fail to arrest the attention of the most
thoughtless, and force a conviction of some of
their responsibilities upon proprietors of houses,
and employers of labourers in docks and building
establishments and manufactories, and middle-
class shopkeepers, and the countless crowd of
residents and visitors of London, whose presence
necessitates the near neighbourhood of a whole
legion of hewers of wood and drawers of water, to
minister to their easy life. Many have answered
nobly to our appeals : hut the multitude of those
who have been deaf to them is far greater.
God will certainly judge those who resolutely
ignore that He has appointed each his poor
brother’s keeper. We have been endeavouring
of late to stir the Christian zeal of the large
middle class, but hitherto we must confess that
we have been more successful with the very rich.
The Church of England has not hitherto suf-
ficiently urged the duty of thus contributing for
the spiritual needs of their neighbours upon all
classes of our people.

The following extract from the last report of
the Diocesan Home Mission shows how urgent is
the call to meet these evils through our Eund.

6C A Missionary was appointed about six months
since to take charge of a conventional district
in one of the large parishes in the East of London,
containing a population of 10,000, of whom 4,000
are Jews. After diligently visiting from house
to house, he wrote his first report, from which
the following extract is taken : — 6 The religious,
educational, and moral condition of the Gentile
population may be imagined from a few facts : —
Not one person in a hundred habitually attends
a place of worship. Of the 228 shops in the
district, 212 are open on Sunday. About seventy,
however, are closed on the Saturday, the Jewish
Sabbath. Not half the Gentile adults can read.
Half the women cannot handle a needle. Our
Mothers’ Meeting has seventy members, half of
whom, though living with men and having fami-
lies, are unmarried, and this is the proportion
throughout the Gentile district. Nine families
out of ten have but one small room in which to
live, eat, and sleep. Not one family in six pos-
sesses a blanket or a change of clothing. Not
one in four has any bedding beyond a sack-
ing, containing a little flock or chopped straw
(a miserable substitute for a mattress). Not one
in twenty has a clock, — not one in ten a book.
Many of the houses are in the most wretched
condition of dirt and filth, walls, ceilings, floors,
and staircases broken and rotting. Drunkenness,

brawling, blasphemy, and other sins are fearfully
prevalent.

“ ‘ A noteworthy feature of the district con-
sists in the different kinds of “ lodging-houses,”
of which there are forty-three. These forty -three
houses accommodate about 2,000 lodgers, who
pay 3d., 4d, or 6d. a night. They vary greatly in
the character of their inmates ; some are occu-
pied by poor hard-working people, gaining an
honest livelihood, while others are called “ thieves’
kitchens,” and rightly deserve their name, their
lodgers living by theft, and other criminal prac-
tices.’

“ Another Missionary, who has been labouring
for more than two vears in connexion with the
Society in the North of London, gives the fol-
lowing account of his Mission district : —

“‘When appointed to this district two years
ago, I found the people in a state of spiritual
destitution hardly to be conceived in Christian
England. In one street of 500 persons, only one
man habitually attending any place of worship ;
the children educating in the streets for crime
and wretchedness. The difficulty of getting such
a population to the House of God can only be
understood by those labouring in similar districts
— habits of neglect in this particular forming an
almost insurmountable barrier. Eor months our
numbers were painfully small ; by and by, how-

ever, the tide turned, and we had the satisfaction
of seeing our little iron church, seating 200,
regularly filled on Sabbath evenings by a devout
and attentive congregation.

“ The following account, given by a Missionary
who entered upon his duties nearly twelve months
since, represents with tolerable accuracy the
religious condition of many of our Mission dis-
tricts. He states that out of 3,431 adults, 367
regularly attend some place of worship ; 858
occasionally attend; whilst 2,209 acknowledge
that they never attend either church or chapel.
The Council desire specially to guard against con-
veying the impression that these facts and state-
ments describe the moral and religious condition
of the parishes at large; they are cited to indi-
cate the condition of that portion of the popula-
tion in those large parishes where the Missionaries
have been appointed to labour, and to show the
urgent necessity of sending among them a holy,
faithful, and devoted body of men, to make
known to them the way of salvation, through
Christ Jesus our Lord.”

With other established Societies we have acted
in the same harmony — the Additional Curates’
and the Church Pastoral Aid Societies, and
the Scripture Headers’ and Parochial Mission
Women’s Societies, whose aid is so indispensable
in the diocese. W^e have enabled them to sup-

port a large number of additional Clergy and lay
agents. Through the Additional Curates’ Society
80 Curates are maintained in the metropolis.
Through the Pastoral Aid Society 65 Curates,
and 21 lay agents. The Scripture Header’s
Society employs 164 lay agents, and the Paro-
chial Mission Women 124. Most of the returns
made to me by these Societies have not dis-
tinguished between that part of the metropolis
which is in my own Diocese, and that which is
in the Diocese of Winchester. Besides these
there are 371 City Missionaries, and 220 Bible
Women, not intimately connected with the paro-
chial system of the Church.

The Diocesan Board of Education, which had
long languished, we have, I trust, summoned
into new life. It is very gratifying to observe
the impulse which the Bishop of London’s Eund
has given to the extension of schools in the
diocese. It should be distinctly understood that
in addition to the 23 schools already mentioned,
the Mission Buildings, with scarcely a single
exception, are used as schools as well as for
Divine service. But this opens a fresh and most
important subject, well worthy of being treated
by itself — the educational condition of London.
Last summer I requested the Society to collect,
what we could not gain from any ordinary source,
a full (and, as far as possible, authentic) report

of the real educational condition of the poor in
London. The result was a representation made
to me that — (1.) The number of children of the
poor in London, of the proper age to receive
education, whom the present school arrange-
ments fail to reach, and who, therefore, are
left neglected, is 150,000. (2.) The proportion
of neglected children to the population is much
greater than is to be found anywhere in England,
except in our other large towns. The accuracy
of this representation has been publicly con-
tested; but I fear the serious fact remains in-
disputable, even if the numbers are incorrect,
that in London there is an army of neglected
children, whom neither the Church of England,
the Homan Catholics, nor Dissenters, nor any
other body of persons interested in education,
reach. We require a great educational effort.
Hitherto, our chief movements for the improve-
ment of London have not sufficiently noted this
miserable neglect.

Persons whose sympathies cannot be stirred to
aid in building new churches, or even securing
new Missionary clergy, are awake to the misery of
a large population, growing up without the power
to read and write ; shut out, in an age of light,
from access to the simplest elements of civiliza-
tion. What can be the result of neglecting them
but to foster, even in the seat where knowledge

most abounds, an ever-growing horde of savages ?
Surely the Bishop of London’s Eund will not
appeal in vain for help, on a large scale, for its
new schools ; and we may hope that its hand-
maid, the Diocesan Board of Education com-
prising in its council many whose names are
familiar as the most earnest promoters of educa-
tion in the kingdom, will not in vain make
known the appeals which have reached them
from so many districts, for aid to assist local
efforts and Government subsidies, in creating
efficient schools in neighbourhoods where hitherto
there have been no good schools ?

But the researches of the Diocesan Board of
Education have revealed another fact. In the
schools which already exist there is room for
many more pupils than at present attend. What
does this show ? That no new schools are wanted
till those already existing are filled ? It is diffi-
cult to see how superabundant school accom-
modation, say at Heston, could be of much use
to the neglected children fifteen miles off, say
in Batcliffe or St. George’ s-in-the-East. But,
moreover, obviously the fact of any school in
the London Diocese, or indeed elsewhere, not
being quite full, does not prove that it is too
large for the district. Country places and
towns alike suffer from that dire demand for
child-labour, which holds out to poverty-

stricken parents an irresistible bribe to barter
their children’s welfare for the bread without
which neither they nor their children can
live. How to meet this evil, and how to deal
with the large class of children whose parents
could easily support them at school, if they
would exercise a little self-control — these are
far more difficult problems than how to find
the money to build new schools where they are
wanted. Our Diocesan Board of Education does
what it can to encourage night-schools. But
the whole subject of the state of education
throughout the kingdom must, before long, come
before the Legislature; and it would be pre-
mature and useless here to do more than call
attention to a great want.

My reverend brethren, I need say little in
urging you to avail yourselves of the great op-
portunities which your position as clergymen
of the National Church affords you, for endea-
vouring, through these appliances of church and
school, and your acknowledged pastoral position,
to bring home the comforts and constraining
motives of the Gospel of Christ to your people’s
hearts. The advantages of that position were,
I think, shown last summer and autumn, in the
way in which you were enabled to minister, as
you did, in a wise spirit, and with unflinching
courage, through that great sickness with which

God visited us. I shall never forget the feelings
with which I met a large body of you for prayer
and mutual consultation, in the schoolroom in
Spitalfields, when I saw before me the clergy of
the most afflicted districts — some fifty men of
all ages and characters and shades of religious
opinion — who, holding their lives cheap in Christ’s
cause, had for weeks been tending in sickness the
poorest of their parishioners, and going out and
in amid the worst ravages of that sad disease.
God grant that the memory of that time may
leave an abiding Christian impression both on
us and on our people. It was your position as
clergy of the National Church which thus gave
you direct access to all within the limits of your
parishes.

You will use all the means already provided
for securing your people’s affections, by diligent
pastoral visitation, by helping all efforts to edu-
cate your people and raise their social condition,
by faithful preaching of the real Gospel of Christ.
The machinery that already exists in our parishes
requires wisdom and zeal for its administra-
tion— wisdom and zeal which come not from
good natural abilities and a cultivated intellect
and habits of business and professional earnest-
ness alone ; but vfflich, chastened and helped by
all these, have their root in the sanctifying in-
fluences of the Holy Spirit, in a deep experi-

mental sense of the misery of human sin, in a
constant reference to the Lord Jesus as our
Atonement and our ever-present Guide, and in
daily growing habits of earnest Christian living.
My brethren, you know that without these our
efforts, however vigorous and well sustained, will
he in vain.

And now, before I close, let me point out that,
many as are the helps provided by our existing
parochial machinery, the wants of our people in
this vast city are so many and so complicated,
that if we are wise we shall ever be devising or
borrowing fresh plans of usefulness. It will be
with our spiritual as with that old secular war-
fare, in which the masters of the world rose to
their pre-eminence by never being too wise or
proud to learn from any quarter. From the
whole body of Dissenters we learn to prize that
careful attention to Sunday-school instruction,
and that skilful organization of teachers, on
which their influence so greatly depends. In the
practice of Wesleyans in particular, we may see
how the whole of a Christian community, from
its poorest to its richest members, may be knit
together in groups, interested directly in each
other’s religious progress. Our wisdom will con-
sist in imitating what is good in the practice
of others, while we use their experience to avoid
the abuse. Neither shall we be too prejudiced

to learn from Home, or from foreign Pro-
testants.

And here a subject of pressing importance
opens which I cannot pass oyer, but which is
scarcely perhaps yet ripe for full discussion ; and
which, therefore, I may be excused for treating
with the brevity which the close of my Charge
necessitates. Time was, and not long ago, when
Homan Catholics were supposed to have a mono-
poly of Sisters of Mercy : when Protestants all
held that women might work as true Sisters of
Mercy (and thank God they can), one by one,
from their own homes, visiting amongst the poor
and desolate in their own neighbourhood ; but
that the system of our Church forbade any
organization for a combined effort to use the
services of women. The fearful emergency of
the Crimean war dispelled this theory. Other
efforts were doubtless being made before, but
that melancholy time changed public opinion.
The heroic spirit who stood forth to guide, and
those no less brave who seconded her efforts,
told the world that English Churchwomen were
ready to combine, where combination was needed,
for any great Christian work ; and our hospitals
will probably always henceforward bear more
and more, the better they are administered, the
impress of that great example.

Now I should be false to all good feeling if I
g 2

did not publicly testify to the great help which
London received, during the late appalling sick-
ness, from the self-denying efforts of Christian
women — some acting alone, on the impulse of
their own individual generous nature, some living
in communities, of which it is the common bond
to be ready, for Christ’s sake, to tend the poor,
at whatever risk. Our cholera hospitals, the
crowded streets and squalid homes of our East-
end parishes, were cheered and blessed by the
presence of many true Sisters of Mercy of the
Church of England, without whom it is certain
that in those desolate regions the suffering would
have been far worse than it was.

Those Christian women who undertake such
works separately will, of course, always find the
clergy ready to welcome them. We know in
how large a portion of London the rank and
duties of the population preclude the help of
lady district visitors, unless they come from a
distance. I am thankful to know that there is
a growing willingness on the part of those who
live in family life, to do what they can to help
the distresses of the poor. But no doubt those
Christian women who work in communities are
still viewed, by the great majority of the clergy,
with considerable suspicion. Would to God
they would abstain from all practices which
make these suspicions reasonable ! The number

of sisterhoods of the Church of England through-
out the country is very great. The deaconesses
who form themselves on the model of the Pro-
testant Institution of Kaiserswertli are, so far as
I can ascertain, as yet comparatively few. The
time has, I think, come, when the clergy generally
and the heads of the Church must enter fully
into the question how the help of Christian
women living in community, and holding them-
selves ready to act amongst the sick and poor,
is to be best arranged. We have amongst us
a large body earnestly desirous of giving them-
selves to such work. I for one, seeing the vast-
ness of the flock committed to me — knowing by
experience how they can alleviate the sufferings
of the poor — have not the heart, if I had the
will, to discourage the zeal, which it is ours not
to extinguish but to direct* God knows we need
their help, if they will give it in the wray which
our Church approves.

The rules which I have myself laid down, as
most necessary in my dealings with such com-
munities have been the following :~

To point out that the first of all duties are
those which we owe to our family. Eamily ties
are imposed direct by God. If family duties
are overlooked, God’s blessing can never be ex-
pected on any efforts which we make for His
Church. Every community, therefore, of sisters

or deaconesses ought to consist of persons who
have fully satisfied all family obligations.

Again all who enter such communities must
he at full liberty to leave them so soon as the
leadings of God’s providence point to another
sphere of Christian duty. Hence all vows of
continuing in the community, actually taken or
mentally implied, are wrong.

Again, the rules of the community must he
simple and carefully guarded, so as to check all
imperiousness in the higher, and all unworthy
and unchristian servile submission in the lower,
members.

Again, great care must be taken to guard
against morbid religious feelings and opinions,
which all experience shows such communities
have a tendency to foster. There must be no
encouragement to a self-righteous estimate of the
life embraced, as if it were more perfect than
that of the family. Each life has its own privi-
leges and its own trials. The only way to live as
a Christian in that sphere which God from time
to time assigns us, is to do our work humbly
as in His sight. And, indeed, the highest life,
if we may venture to compare the privileges
which God assigns, is that of the truly Christian
head of a family. Care must be taken also that
the worship of the community shall not encourage
exaggerated views of doctrine, such as every nar-

row clique is prone to adopt ; and that tendency
must be steadily resisted which women often
show to hang unduly on the guidance of some
priestly adviser, to be making confession to him,
and to become in fact his slaves.

I cannot but hope that the great difficulties
which confessedly beset the proper regulation of
such communities may be grappled with. I am
sure it is the part of us, the clergy, to make the
attempt, that we may secure the assistance of
sisters or deaconesses in work which in many of
our parishes it is scarcely possible to accomplish
without their aid. And I cannot but trust also
that, as time goes on, many of these excellent
women, who at present adhere somewhat tena-
ciously to their own peculiarities, will be ready
to drop them — learning in their labour of love
the infinite value of that simpler and purer
Christianity which alone sustains souls on the
death-beds to which they so often minister —
becoming willing to sacrifice their own opinions,
from a growing truer devotion to our Reformed
Church, and prizing as they ought that larger
field of usefulness which formal hearty recog-
nition under proper rules by the clergy and
authorities of the Church would at once open
to them.

Our age is certainly prone to combinations,
and by combinations to advance Christ’s Gospel

under proper guidance much good may be done,
both to those who combine and those whom they
seek to influence. A good beginning has been
practically made in this diocese in the direction
of the Resolution adopted by the Bishops at
Lambeth last Ascension Day. We have an asso-
ciation of laymen, under the guidance of the
Bishop, ready to assist, and actively assisting,
incumbents who apply to them. This association
is daily increasing in influence. Some of our
poorest parishes can even now testify to the
assistance afforded to the over-worked clergy by
these lay associates. The meetings have hitherto,
as in the case of the somewhat similar association
of ladies, been held at London House, to assure
all, in the commencement of this work, of
the approval and active co-operation of the
Diocesan; and we have enlisted the help of
clerical associates whose parochial experience,
intelligence, and judgment may assist our lay-
men in ascertaining what are the best fields for
their energy. Thus we have besides our paid
agents, our bands of voluntary lay workers, both
men and women of various ranks, associating
themselves to spend what time they can spare
from their common duties in helping the clergy,
and cementing their association by seeking the
Bishop’s guidance or commission, and by a simple
participation together at some stated time of the

Sacrament of the Death of Him for whom they
labour.

May God grant that these new efforts, har-
monising with the old parochial arrangements,
may tend to spread an increased spirit of Chris-
tian zeal amongst us, and that we, the clergy,
may find our difficult work lightened by the
new helps supplied.

Certainly, brethren, we in London have need
of every help. We stand in the forefront of the
battle. To us is committed the most important
position in that National Church which God has
chosen, that He may delegate to it the most
difficult of His works — to resist the barbarism
which, in the overflowing population of a vast
people, is apt to spring up side by side with the
highest refinement ; while in its labours amongst
all classes, battling against worldliness and in-
fidelity and superstition, it does what it can to
guide the religious thought of a great and in-
telligent nation, and to advance thereby the
Christian civilization of the world.

BRIGHTON ,

December ls£, 1866.

APPENDIX.

Statement of Sums voluntarily expended during the last four years ,
exclusive of all Donations from the Bishop of London’s Fund.

DEANERIES.

Church

Building

and

Restoration.

Erection

Enlargement

Schools,
Chapels,
and other
Church
Buildings.

Salaries of
Curates from
other sources
than the
Income of
the Incum-
bent, of
Scripture
Readers, and
Bible or
Mission
Women.

Deanery of Fulham, Barues, and Ham- )

mersmith 1

„ Kensington

,, St. George, Bloomsbury .

,, Chelsea

,, Ealing

„ Enfield

„ Greenwich

,, Woolwich

,, St. George, Hanover Square

„ Hampton

,, Harrow

„ St. Martin -in-the-Fields . .

„ St. Marylebone

„ Paddington

,, St. Pan eras

„ Staines. ... ...

„ Uxbridge

„ St. James, Westminster . .

„ St. John, Westminster . .

„ St. Margaret, Westminster .

,, East City

„ West City

„ Barking

„ Hackney

„ Islington

„ St. Sepulchre

„ Spitalfields

„ Stepney

16,618

44,372
3,700
1,191
38,038
36,933
64,237
5,429
17,597
12,786
14,901
2,520
22,421
3 6,723
39,541
5,371
12,225
5,652
8,256
878
250
6,930
33,667
29,583
53,699
42,651
15,846
20,080

7,706

9,264

3,502

6,994

7,587

11,072

2,802

4,200

2,184

1,983

16,168

8,525

10,136

2,203

1,684

230

8,640

481

11,918

3,013

24,760

10,789

7,585

14,874

1,563

1,593

2,960

3,235

853

3,242

3,026

2,323

4,532

360

774

2,222

15,816

2,676

11,552

1,077

3,615

2,059

1,329

840

1,076

3,320

2,089

1,759

10,355

15,569

9,646

£572,095

£179,300

£109,461*

TOTAL.

Church Building £572,095

Schools 379,300

Salaries 109,461

£860,856

* The Returns on which this Total of £100,461 is founded, do not, in all cases, show the
source of the Grant, so that it is probable the amount may include some few Grants from
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

LONDON :

It. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,

BREAD STREET HILL.

A CHARGE

DELIVERED TO THE

CLERGY OF NEWFOUNDLAND,

JUNE 25, 1866,

AND

PRINTED AT THEIR REQUEST.

EDWARD FEILD, D.D.

BISHOP OE NEWFOUNDLAND.

Eontton,

RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE ;

HIGH STREET, | TRINITY STREET,

©xfoiir. I <JTamf)ri&ge.

1867.

CHARGE,

&C.

My Reverend Brethren,

Let it not be thought altogether idle or out of
place, if I commence by confessing that I feel at every
visitation, great, and I might truly say increasing,
difficulty, in thus addressing you. You may suppose
that it should be a pleasure to a Bishop, not
less than a duty, to speak words of brotherly, or
fatherly counsel and exhortation to his Clergy, trusting
they will be received in a spirit of respect and affection,
with due consideration of his many cares and engage-
ments. But when I reflect on the nature and im-
portance of a Bishop’s Charge to his Clergy; or
specially of mine to you, — how rare in occurrence, how
grave in its purpose, and how much may reasonably
be expected in it both of advice and encouragement,
can it be otherwise than natural and proper to feel and
confess the ever-increasing difficulty ? And allow
me to remind you further (what some of you,
I am persuaded, will readily acknowledge), that
while the subjects which should on this occasion
engage our attention are more in number, and,
perhaps, greater in interest than ever before,

a 2

my opportunities of studying and stating them
have been, almost in the same proportion, fewer
and less. Still you will, I trust, give me credit
for having used all the diligence, and made all
the preparation in my power ; and will pray to
God with me, and for me, that what I speak may he
4 4 good to the use of edifying.” And I cannot hut
be aware that your manifold engagements, pursued,
as I believe in general they are, with unremitting
labour, leave you but little leisure for studying and
mastering the various questions of the day, and so
may render even what I can offer of information and
instruction useful and acceptable to you. With this
twofold object in view, I shall direct my remarks
(1) To matters of local interest, and (2) To subjects
affecting the Church — I mean our Reformed branch
of it — in other countries and here.

1. I will commence, as usual, with a resume of my
own official proceedings. By the good providence of
God I have been permitted to remain and labour in my
own Diocese, since our last Visitation, without any
intermission ; except only the time necessarily spent —
I cannot say wasted — in passing to and fro between
Newfoundland and Bermuda. I cannot say wasted,
because I feel conscious of deriving much benefit from
the intercourse, which those journeys afford me, with my
good brother of Nova Scotia ; benefit which turns, I
trust, in some measure to your profit, and makes
me earnestly desire opportunities of meeting him and
other my brethren regularly and periodically, for
mutual edification and comfort. If this be unattainable,
an occasional visit to England — there to be an eye-
witness of the proceedings and progress of the Church,
and to receive counsel and instruction from those more
advanced in knowledge and grace — would be, I believe,
with God’s blessing, of great benefit both to the Bishop

and his Clergy. In this interval of four years I have
twice visited Bermuda, and performed such routine
official duties as were required at my hands, and could
be performed in the short and sadly insufficient period
of my sojourn there. You do not, I presume, know how
much, and with how much reason, your brethren in
that Colony, and their kind and attached flocks,
complain, I will not say of the more time and service
I devote to you and yours, but of the comparatively
little they receive from him who is set over them in
the Lord, and whose position and authority they
recognize with all due and affectionate respect. Let
me then ask you to join your prayers to those of your
brethren in that distant part of this too extensive Diocese,
that God will be pleased to open a way in which
the duties and services of the chief pastor may be ren-
dered to both more frequently and effectually.

You are all aware that in the interval above
named, since the last general Visitation, I have made,
as usual, two voyages in the Church- Ship : the first in
1863, along the whole south and west coast, as far as
St. John’s Island, at the entrance of Belle-Isle Strait ;
the second last year, along the east and north-east
coast of Newfoundland and Labrador; each voyage
occupying about four months. By God’s merciful
providence, I and my companions and the good Church-
Ship went and returned on each occasion in perfect
safety ; and I had the great comfort of finding all my
Clergy in health at their several Missionary Stations,
and of celebrating with them the holy services of our
respective offices. On the (so-called) French shore on
the western side of the Island, besides those settlements
which have the benefit of a Missionary’s services, I visited
and officiated in the Bay of Islands, Bonne Bay, Rocky
Bay, and Shallow Bay, and made provision for the
appointment of a Missionary in or for these settlements ;

hitherto, as you are aware, only visited by myself and
Clergy in the Church- Ship once in four years. St. John’s
Island (before alluded to), the next settlement on that
coast, and which I also visited, is attached to, though
alas ! forty miles distant from, Forteau, on the coast
of Labrador ; but it is sixty miles from the nearest
extremity of the new Mission. The appointment, or
rather preparation to appoint, a Missionary in the
long-neglected Bay of Islands and neighbouring Bays,
may be regarded as the great event of that voyage, for
which, and its subsequent accomplishment, I desire
you, in Christ’s name, with and for me, to thank and
praise God ; and to ask His blessing upon the services
of the Rev. Mr. Rule, who has gone to reside and
labour on that distant and dreary shore. It had, as
some of you may perhaps know, been for many years
the cherished wish of my heart.

I have been enabled to visit the Bay of Islands, in
the Church- Ship, four times, but, those excepted, only
one short visit has been paid the poor inhabitants of
that locality by any of our Clergy since Archdeacon Wix’s
memorable journey by land twenty- six or twenty- seven
years ago. And in Bonne Bay, whe^e there are now
twelve or thirteen resident families, professed members
of our Church (most of them having migrated from the
Mission of Channel or La Poele), the services of the
Church have never been celebrated, I believe, by any
Clergyman before my late visit. On that occasion, on
board the Church- Ship, with morning and evening
prayer and a sermon, I celebrated Holy Communion
and Confirmation, and received four children into
the Church. The candidates for Confirmation, six in
number, had been previously instructed and prepared at
Channel by the Rev. Mr. Le Gallais ; who, having ac-
companied me from thence, had the privilege of present-
ing them, to their mutual gratification. I mention the

condition of Bonne Bay to show how great need there
was of some provision for the spiritual wants of the in-
habitants, and how great should be our thankfulness
that it has pleased God to send a good and faithful la-
bourer into that portion of His harvest.

In that voyage (of 1863) I confirmed seven hundred
and fifty- three candidates at thirty-five stations ; at
seventeen in churches ; at eleven in rooms ; and at
seven on hoard the Church- Ship. The largest number
presented in one Mission was one hundred and
eighty-four, by the Bev. Mr. Le Gallais ; some of them
in settlements never before visited by a Bishop, and ac-
cessible only by boats. I consecrated in the same voyage
two churches and eight grave-yards ; six of the latter in
settlements many miles distant from any church.

In my second voyage, I mean that of last year, I
had the great gratification of finding candidates pre-
pared for Confirmation in the region of White Bay
and Canada Bay, on the eastern French shore, so long
untliought of and uncared for, but now blessed with the
services of a zealous and faithful Missionary. The Bev.
Mr. Temple presented to me candidates in both White Bay
and Canada Bay, the firstfruits of, I trust, an abundant
harvest. They were chiefly persons advanced in life,
who thankfully embraced the first- opportunity of being
thus presented, thereby testifying their allegiance to
the Church, and their desire to profit by her holy ordi-
nances and means of grace. Mr. Temple also petitioned
for the consecration of four grave -yards, cleared and
fenced by the people at his instigation and under his
superintendence. I regard the desire to set apart a place
for Christian burial as an approach to reverence for holy
things, and to an appreciation, or at least apprehension,
of those great doctrines of our Creed, “ the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come and on
these, and other accounts, am always glad to have it

encouraged. It is perhaps the first step to be taken, in
outward things, in every new Mission, and it has been
well taken in White Bay, and will be followed, I am
persuaded, with results of more importance. I had also
in this voyage the gratification of consecrating a
fourth church on the Labrador (at the Seal Islands), and
of officiating in a fifth, nearly completed, at Bed Bay. I
held a confirmation at Battle Harbour, the second or third
during Mr. Hutchinson’s residence, at each of which
some Esquimaux were presented and confirmed ; and,
but for the recent change of the Missionary at Forteau,
I should have had the like privilege in that Mission. I
visited nearly all the principal harbours on the Labrador,
inhabited or resorted to by our fishermen, from Indian
Tickle to Blanc Sablon, some of them for the first time ;
several also on the French shore, not yet embraced in
any Mission, but greatly needing and desiring more fre-
quent visits ; nearly all the inhabitants being members of
our Church. In this second voyage I confirmed 756 per-
sons at 32 stations ; at twenty-six in churches; at four in
rooms ; at two in the Church- Ship ; and consecrated six
churches and eleven cemeteries. In the interval between
these two voyages, I confirmed twice in the Cathedral ; one
hundred and seventeen on the former, and one hundred
and thirty-one on the latter occasion ; and consecrated two
new churches in Conception Bay, and two in Trinity Bay,
and a cemetery at Harbour Grace. Since my late return
from Bermuda, this year, I have confirmed five hun-
dred and ninety-eight well-ordered candidates in the
Beanery of Conception Bay, and a second gleaning in
the Mission of Ferryland ; and consecrated a cemetery
in Upper Island Cove. Putting the numbers together,,
it has been my privilege, in the interval of four years
since the last Visitation, to confirm about two thousand
four hundred persons, and to consecrate thirteen
churches, and twenty-two or twenty-three grave-yards.

There are four more churches finished and awaiting
consecration \ and five or six others in progress ; all, I
believe, of a character and construction far superior to
those of former days ; nearly all being furnished with a
convenient vestry and comely chancel, open seats,
prayer-desk, lectern, pulpit, and font.

I do not know that there is any particular remark to
he made or advice to be offered, in reference to the oc-
currences of these voyages and visits, more than I have
made and offered to you severally, as occasion was
given, on the spot. You must allow me, however, to ac-
knowledge my great obligations to you for your kind
attentions to me personally, and yet more for
the well-filled churches and holy services, with which
you welcomed and refreshed me. I hardly call to mind
more than two or three churches on each coast in which
I did not witness some improvement, either of structure
or furniture, and what is of far more importance, some
increase of reverence and attention, some addition to the
(as I trust) worthy partakers of the Holy Table : and
if the candidates for Confirmation were not, as it
seemed, in every place duly prepared, or not sufficiently
acquainted with their part in the service, I could not but
remember how infrequent and irregular, in most cases,
are your opportunities of meeting them for examination,

1 Three of these have been consecrated since the delivery of
this Charge, and a Confirmation celebrated in each : viz. at Long
Pond in Conception Bay, and at Kiels and Bonavista in Bonavista
Bay. The whole number therefore of churches consecrated since
the 24th of June, 1863, is sixteen, in the following order : viz. in
1863, at Ferry land and Channel ; 1864, Bay of Bulls, Salmon Cove,
Carbonear, Heart’s Delight, and Sillee Cove ; 1865, Seal Islands
(Labrador), Shoe Cove, Exploits, Pool’s Island, Salvage, and Hew
Perlican ; 1866, Long Pond, Kiels, and Bonavista. At the Confir-
mations since the Visitation, 111 have been presented, making the
whole number in the same interval, that is, from St. John Baptist’s
Day 1863 to the present time, upwards of 2,500.

and how small, in general, their amount of knowledge
and power of self-instruction.

You are in this respect, as indeed in many others,
but in this particularly, far less happily circumstanced
for ministerial duty and usefulness than your brethren
in Bermuda; all whose candidates may be reached
by their respective Clergy any given day, and are
continually under observation, while nearly all of the
younger class can read, and have and use their
books of Common Prayer : and, therefore, except in
respect of age, I hardly know that I should venture
to repeat in your case the requirements properly
addressed to those who enjoy such opportunities ; re-
quirements grounded upon the many years’ experience
of the pious and prudent Bishop Wilson, the sage and
saint of Sodor and Man; 4 4 that the Clergy should
present no candidates for Confirmation, but such as
are fifteen years complete, well instructed in the Chris-
tian religion, and fitted for the Lord’s Supper.” I am
too well aware that such attainments and preparation
in many cases in this country are not possible ; I trust
however that you will all remember, and see carried
out, the directions in the Preface to the Order of Con-
firmation ; and will require from your candidates some
declaration and evidence of a desire to use and profit by
all the opportunities of instruction and means of grace.

All hitherto related of our proceedings and progress
appears, nay indeed is, highly gratifying and encou-
raging, and affords abundant occasion of thanksgiving
to Him Who has favoured and helped us in the accom-
plishment of so many good works, in the midst of a
season of almost unprecedented poverty and depression.
But lest, it may be, we should be unduly elated by these
marks of G-od’s favour and mercy towards us, or, for-
getting the favour and mercy, should think too much
of our own endeavours and performances, we have been

of late too sensibly taught that we are not exempted,
or to be exempted, from trials and disappointments,
which, though they affect some Missions particularly,
cannot but affect and afflict all who realize the doctrine
that 44 if one member suffer, all the members suffer
with it;” chiefly and especially him, who (if I may
adopt an Apostle’s language) has the care of all
the Churches, and who, if permitted to 4 ‘rejoice
with them that do rejoice,” must be prepared to
“weep with them that weep.” Sad indeed was the trial,
and grievous the disappointment of not being enabled
to hold Confirmations in the populous and important
Missions of Harbour Grace, Portugal Cove, and the
Out-harbours ; containing seven churches with as
many different settlements, and in each many young
persons needing and desiring those gifts and graces,
which we are taught to expect, if it please God,
by the laying on of hands. And yet more sad
and more grievous still, that in these Missions young
and old should be deprived, as they all now are, of the
services of the duly appointed Minister. Two of these
Missions are now vacant, nor do I see any early prospect,
in the present dearth of Clergy, of their being filled.
Add to this, the want of a competent person for the
office of Vice-Principal of our little College, vacant now
for upwards of a year and a half ; a great want,
and fraught with many bad consequences, not the
least of which is the pressure upon the Archdeacon,
who, in the midst of his other heavy and anxious duties,
has most kindly undertaken the instruction of the
students, and the general direction of their studies
and pursuits. And here I cannot but choose to men-
tion, as an occasion of mutual congratulation, that I
have been enabled to obtain for myself and you the
services of an Archdeacon of experience, learning, and
piety, who has already shown his desire and power to

share and lighten my labours ; and who, I am per-
suaded, will be equally ready to advise and assist you,
as there may be occasion and opportunity. It can
scarcely be necessary to remind you that he, next to
the Ordinary, and after him the Rural Deans, are the
chief Ministers, unto whom, in every Diocese, 4 4 is
committed the charge and government over the other
Clergy.” I may take this opportunity of tendering my
thanks to the Rural Deans for their services ; and, at
the same time, of requesting their brethren in each
Deanery, respectively, to show their regard for the office
and their desire to render it more effective, by applying
to them, in the first instance, for information in any
matter of doubt or difficulty, ahd by receiving and
accepting cheerfully and gratefully their instructions
and admonitions ; and, let me add, by interchange of
visits, where possible, and other personal intercourse.
None of you can know, until you have tried, and tried
for a sufficiently long time to form a just and right
judgment, the happy, holy effects of such brotherly
intercourse, specially, I would say, in the case of per-
sons holding different views ; presuming that they hold
their views in purity and charity ; or, as St. James
teaches, “ without partiality and without hypocrisy.”
In such persons, no method is, I believe, so effectual for
removing suspicions, and correcting, on either side,
prejudices and misapprehensions. I speak from expe-
rience ; and it may be of use to mention that during
the whole eleven years of my incumbency of a parish
in England, it was my privilege to belong to a volun-
tary association of neighbouring Clergy, meeting
periodically at each other’s houses ; which has sur-
vived, I believe (with, of course, frequent changes of
members), to the present day. And although there
was, or rather let me say because there was, that
diversity of view on matters of both doctrine and

practice, which has ever existed, and may lawfully and
religiously exist, between members or Ministers of the
Church on earth, I at least, and I believe I might
affirm the same for all, found our meetings both
pleasant and profitable ; not only in learning from
each other, and coming to agreement on con-
troverted points, but in finding that our differences
were not such, or so great, as to hinder charitable and
brotherly intercourse. If any thing was wanting to
bring our conferences and consultations to a practical
issue, or to prevent too vague and desultory discussion,
it was an acknowledged head, or, if you please, centre :
which want is now, I understand, generally supplied
in England by meeting under the presidency, or in
the presence, of a Rural Dean. I would strongly
recommend such Associations and Meetings of the
Clergy, wherever practicable ; and I feel assured that
with the exercise of patience, humility, and charity,
all would reap some benefit, some fruits, as I have
said, both pleasant and profitable. Even if you did
not attain to that degree of grace and holiness, which
the Apostle desired for his Corinthian brethren and
disciples, to be “ perfectly joined together in the same
mind and in the same judgment,” there would at least
be “ no divisions among you may I not rather hope
that “whereunto you have attained, or did attain, you
would walk by the same rule and mind the same thing ?”
In connexion with this subject it is proper to inform
you, that the Rural Deanery of Trinity Bay (embracing,
as you know, Bonavista Bay), having become, through
the late happy increase of Clergy in each of these Bays,
too large for convenient superintendence by the Rector
of Trinity, will henceforward be divided ; and that the
Rev. Mr. Bayly, the resident Missionary of Bonavista,
will be the first Rural Dean of the new Deanery of
Bonavista Bay. Mr. Bayly has the recommendations

not only of age and experience, but of dutifulness and
devotion to the work of his calling, of which he has
given evidence (after erecting a very comely, well-
finished church in the smaller settlement of Aqua-
forte, while Missionary of Ferryland) by undertaking
and bringing to completion a noble and beautiful church
in his present Mission, suitable to the requirements
and antecedents of Bonavista, the residence, for several
years, of the first Archdeacon of Newfoundland. I
easily persuade myself that Mr. Bayly’s acceptance of
the office of Kural Dean will be as agreeable to his
brethren in the Bay as to his Bishop, and that both
will derive benefit from his counsel and co-operation.
I feel bound, however, to observe that I have not been
induced to make this change by any unwillingness or
inability on the part of the present Bural Dean of
Trinity Bay to perform all the duties and services re-
quired of him. But the range of the two Bays has always
been too extensive, and the addition of three Mission-
aries, and two of them very distant from Trinity, would
increase, beyond reason, his work and responsibility.

I have alluded to the vacancies now existing in two
important Missions and in the College (some of them,
alas, of long standing), and the improbability of filling
them to our satisfaction. Now it cannot be doubted
that one cause of this most distressing difficulty, felt
and complained of more or less in all the British
North American Dioceses, is the inadequacy of the
stipends ; or I might say, in this Diocese, the absence of
any fixed stipend. What payment will be guaranteed ?
is the question always, and most naturally asked, by or
•for those who are invited or recommended to leave
their homes for the service of the Church in a colony
or foreign land. And this difficulty may be expected
to operate most strongly in obtaining a Vice-Principal
of our College ; inasmuch as, in his case, some special

qualifications and attainments are requisite, which can
command in England special and high remuneration.
The present stipends of the majority of the Clergy in
this Diocese are derived in great part, and the support
of the College almost entirely, from the funds of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, over which we have no control, and which may
be withheld from us, or reduced in amount, at the
pleasure of the Committee : and some reduction we
have been warned, many times and long ago, to expect
and prepare for. The Society, partly, it may be,
induced, or influenced, by my published “ Plea for the
Church in the Colonies ” (of which each of you, I believe,
has been furnished with a copy), have consented to
renew and continue the stipends of all the present
Missionaries, and the whole allowance to the College,
for this and the two following years ; but on the
condition, or understanding, that we exert ourselves in
the mean time to form some kind of endowment, as is
being done in the other North American Dioceses.
Nobody can dispute the reasonableness and justice of
such a condition. Now it has occurred to me that the
formation or commencement of such a Fund in this
Diocese would meet with more favour and success if
devoted, in the first instance, to some definite and
attainable object, such as the support of our little
College. For this object — or rather for the support,
including education and training for the Ministry, of
not more than six students — I am allowed to draw
from the funds of the Society, for this and the two
following years, the full allowance of <£50; that is,
in all, £300 per annum. Is it beyond hope that
we might, with some assistance from friends in
England, relieve the Society of that charge by the
close of the prescribed period ; and at the same time
place beyond risk an institution which has already

proved of so much value to the Diocese, and on which
we must continually depend, more and more, for the
supply of Clergy ? If at any time it should be deemed
necessary or expedient that the interest of the amount
raised should be applied towards the maintenance of
Missionaries, it would be competent, with the consent
of the subscribers, so to apply it ; but the following
reasons incline me to give preference, or at least prece-
dence, to the Endowment of the College.

(1) Through the College we may hope to
obtain a more ready supply of Candidates for the
Ministry ; presenting an opening and inducement
to pious and respectable young men in the country,
who would hardly bear the expense of seeking
education and training elsewhere ; and this con-
sideration would, I believe, incline our men of means
more cheerfully to give their assistance ; for their
fellow-countrymen, as well as for the Church's sake.
(2) A definite and attainable object generally has more
favour, or at least support, than one of which we do
not see the end and result. (3) Lastly, the number of
Clergymen who have been wholly or in part educated
and trained in the College is now sufficiently large to*
testify the usefulness and efficiency of the Institution ;
and we may reckon upon their earnest advocacy. It
is therefore my intention to propose that a considerable
grant be made from the Funds of the Church Society ;
and that subscriptions be solicited and collections made
in the Churches, until, if it please God so to prosper our
endeavours, we can bring the College Endowment Fund
to the same satisfactory state as the Fund for the
Relief of the Widows and Orphans of the Clergy :
— I mean, to meet the requirements of the College,
as the other Fund does, and we trust will, every demand
made upon it. The Fund, as far as created in New-
foundland, I should desire to be under such control and

management as the majority of the subscribers may de-
termine and approve. I shall not be afraid or ashamed
to advocate the cause in England, if I am enabled to
lay before my friends and the public there a real and
good commencement in our own Colony and Diocese.
I earnestly hope this plan or method of endowment,
unless a better can be proposed and carried out,
will meet with your approval and support.

It may not be amiss, in connexion with this subject,
to inform you that the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel have lately given fresh evidence of their
care for their Missionaries, by establishing a Super-
annuation Fund ; available, I presume, for the relief of
Missionaries, who, as well by sickness or any other
adversity, as by age, have become incapable of minis-
terial work. I trust this excellent charity may in
some manner be extended to meet the similar incapacity
of Missionary or Colonial Clergymen not on the
Society’s list ; who generally will have as little, or in
some cases even less, opportunity of making provision
for such an emergency, and whose labours will have
been equally severe, and equally, it may be, unrequited.

I may also mention that the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge has in like manner established
another claim upon our gratitude by offering, unsolicited,
a small Theological Library to any of the Missionary
Clergy in this Diocese, who apply for it with the
sanction and recommendation of the Bishop. The
offer has been made directly, I believe, to every Clergy-
man in the Diocese connected with the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel ; the Library to be per-
manently attached to the Mission. While I have had
great pleasure in generally recommending the appli-
cations, I must add that I could not feel justified in
doing so for those Clergymen whose Missions are not
provided with a Parsonage, in which the books might

bo. preserved for future Missionaries. But, on the
other hand, I have ventured to request the Society to
extend their very useful and acceptable gift to the
Clergy, not in connexion with the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel, occupying Parsonages or Mission-
houses, and stipulating in like manner for the preserva-
tion of the hooks. In the majority of cases the same
arguments apply in their behalf in respect of this
Charity as in that of the Superannuation Fund. And
I shall be ready to forward and recommend the
application of any Clergyman really needing the books,
and undertaking to have them preserved and handed
down to his successors.

I am not aware of any new local events or circum-
stances affecting yourselves or your congregations
generally (other than those already mentioned) to
which it is necessary to allude, except perhaps the
recent introduction in some Missions of Wesleyan
Preachers and Meeting-houses. It is useless to refer
to and expose, as is easily done, the inconsistency (to
use the mildest term) of retaining the name, while
departing from the principles, of their founder ; but
we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that under, or
with, the name of Wesley this sect now assumes
the divinely appointed Orders and ordinances of
our Church, and propagates their system with all the
zeal of separatists. I believe it is no longer pretended,
as formerly, that they do not differ or separate from
the Church of England ; — at any rate the ordination,
with laying on of hands, of their Ministers, the
erection of what they now call Churches (which their
founder taught them to call Preaching or Meeting-
houses), and the celebration and administration in
form and manner of the Holy Sacraments, must
remove all doubt not only of difference but separation.
And for this avowal we may be thankful, both on

account of their congregations and our own : on
account of theirs, because there is more hope that the
difference, being perceived and understood, may con-
vince some of their error and danger ; and of ours,
because none can any longer doubt of the character
and pretensions of modern Wesleyanism, or fail to
perceive how unreal revivals are hut efforts to recruit
or sustain an unreal Church. And our duty in regard
of both Wesleyans and our own congregations now is,
not to prove that there is a difference, — that is
admitted or cannot be denied, — but to show what the
difference is, and wherein consist the error and
danger of the separation. To do this with effect it
will be necessary you should be well acquainted with
the origin and progress of their Society, and with
their departure by degrees from their founder’s
principles, until they made themselves, contrary to his
precepts and professions (and, in his view surely not
less than ours, contrary to the rule and doctrine of
Holy Scripture), a Church — the Wesleyan Church !
In the mean while, though separation has in its nature
more zeal and energy than an established system, we
and our congregations may and should be provoked to
jealousy by those who, whether they are or are not a
Church, are abundant in labours and liberal in contribu-
tions. And let us never forget the hands stretched forth
to them with us, and to us with them, yes to both, all
the daylong, — “a disobedient and gainsaying people.”
0 that those pierced hands may not be stretched
forth to either of us in vain ! 0 that both, and all,

may know and obey the truth ! And surely for those
who have a zeal of God, though, it may be, not
according to knowledge, our heart’s desire and prayer
to God must ever be, that they may be saved.

There are now resident and officiating with my
licence in Newfoundland and Labrador forty- two

b 2

Clergymen, besides the Master of our Church of
England Academy : two more are absent on leave,
and I grieve to say their places not supplied ; and the
important post of Vice-Principal of the College is still
vacant. If all the vacancies were filled, we should
number forty-five Ministers “ lawfully called and sent/’
according to the rule of our Church ; all but two
wholly engaged in ministerial work. If the number
appear considerable, in comparison with that of former
days (say of twenty-five years ago), let us always re-
member that for the chief maintenance of the majority,
and of your Bishop, we are still dependent and
depending on foreign charity : yes, shall I confess it ?
in great measure upon the shillings and pence of
artisans and labourers in England, collected by persons
on whom we have no claim, and whose work and
labour of love is performed on our behalf on the
supposition that our congregations cannot provide for
us — that is, in truth, for themselves. How far such a
supposition is correct, and how far we and our con-
gregations are justified in continuing thus largely
dependent, are questions which ought to be asked and
answered, if we really expect to maintain our standing,
and prosper in our work ; much more if we hope, by
God’s blessing, to lengthen our cords and strengthen
our stakes, to stretch forth, as we ought, to the right
hand and to the left. And I wish to remind you, and
pray you to keep it in mind, that at least six additional
Clergymen are urgently required in Newfoundland, and
one or two on the Labrador, to form as many new and
additional Missions. Lay these things to heart, and
say if there be not need and occasion more than
enough for praying and striving together, ministers
and people, each for each, that the grace of God
bestowed upon the Churches of Macedonia (of which
the Apostle wrote so gladly and gratefully to the

Corinthians) may be vouchsafed here also ; though
not, as in their case, for the temporal wants of
others, but for our own spiritual necessities — a far more
urgent call : while the poorest may comfort themselves
with the gracious assurance that, “if there be first a
willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man
hath, and not according to that he hath not.”

Of our Schools I might almost ask, Where are they ?
for, excepting our Sunday Schools, we, as Clergymen
and Incumbents of Churches, or rather as members of
the Church of England, strictly speaking, have none.
A move indeed in the right direction has been made in
the last Session of the Legislature, for which I am
very grateful, giving in a small measure the same
power and privilege to the Church of England, which
have been so long and liberally granted to the Eoman
Catholics, and, I believe, in a good degree to the
Wesleyans also; — I mean, to establish Schools
under our own management and superintendence,
hampered by no chilling compromise or jealous inter-
ference. I have not forgotten that large legislative
grants have been, and are, made, year after year, to
the Colonial and Continental Church Society for the
support of their Schools, on the supposition that they
are ordered and directed according to the rules and
principles of the Church of England. I have already,
on more than one occasion, felt it my duty to state
plainly why I cannot regard them in that light, and
why consequently I cannot, to my sorrow and loss,
co-operate with their Society ; but always with a free
and thankful admission that their Schools have been,
and are, of much benefit to the Colony. I must be
pardoned if I cannot understand how, as Clergymen,
having regard to our own and each other’s rights and
duties, we can support a Society which selects,
appoints, and removes Teachers, without any reference

to the resident or officiating Minister, gives him no
voice or part in the management or direction of the
Schools, no not to examine in them the children of the
Church, without the permission of the Master or Mistress.
I may mention in explanation and excuse of my objec-
tions a recent instance of my own experience. I
visited, as permitted by the rules of the Society, a
School of girls ; was kindly and respectfully received
by the Mistress, and was invited by her to examine a
class ; hut when I would have gone forward for that
purpose (there are few duties in which I take greater
pleasure), the Mistress informed me, very properly,
that the Teacher of the class belonged to the
Wesleyan Church ! What could I do or say ?
Should I offend her feelings and convictions, or forget
my own character and office ? I thought it kinder to
her and her pupils, and better and safer for myself, to
retire. I might indeed have asked some questions in
grammar or arithmetic, or have propounded some
general Bible truths ; hut how could I, or any Clergy-
man, in such circumstances, have sustained the
character or discharged the obligations of a Minister
of the Church of England ? If these were only
secular Schools, of no distinctive or denominational
name or character, as those of the British and
Foreign School Society, there would he nothing,
in what I have stated, contrary to the principles on
which such Schools are conducted ; hut it is different
with professedly Church Schools, supposed to he con-
ducted on Church principles, and to inculcate Church
doctrines. I may confess that I have been moved to
make these remarks and offer these explanations
(which, I fear, may appear rather out of place on such
an occasion) by the Report of the local Committee of
this Society recently presented to the Legislature. All
of you, I presume, are aware that the different Boards

of Education have been called on to present Reports,
containing their views and recommendations on this
all-important subject. As might be expected, their
opinions and suggestions are many and various ; that
in which there appears to he the most general agree-
ment is the inefficient or unsatisfactory character of
the present system of Inspection. I cannot, however,
doubt that the Inspector’s office, if performed by
persons in whom the Boards could feel confidence, and
the Clergy and Ministers could respect, is, or should
be, of great value ; as is proved in England by the
high state of efficiency to which the Elementary
Schools have been brought by their instrumentality.
It may perhaps be a question whether this Colony is
in a condition to profit by such agency, and whether
the salaries of Inspectors wTould not be better employed
in increasing the stipends of the present poorly paid
Teachers, or adding to their number. With their
other suggestions we, perhaps, as Clergymen, are not
specially concerned. It is different with the Report
of a Society, or Committee of a Society, professing to
be strictly of the Church of England, receiving as such
legislative aid and the subscriptions of Church people
in England, and presenting their Schools to us, in
that character, for the education of our children. We
cannot perhaps complain or wonder that their Report
is condemnatory of every mode and manner of
education but their own, and begins and ends with
recommending their own Schools, particularly the
Central School in St. John’s ; but I am at a loss how
to reconcile with any Church principles the declaration,
that grants ought not to be made according to, as
they are pleased to say, “the miserable distinction of
religious denomination in education.”

I have already suggested that for the better educa-
tion of the poor of our Church, better especially in

regard to the essential element of true religion, our
desire and aim should he to obtain the privilege
(already long enjo}red by the Roman Catholics) of
placing the instruction of the children, I mean the
children of our own communion, under the direction
of the members of our own Church only ; in short, to
procure the sub-division of the legislative grant. The
separate amount recently placed at my disposal is but
trifling, and is chiefly intended for, and will be expended
in, places otherwise unprovided for, as on the Labrador
and the new Missions on the French shore. In the
mean while I would entreat, and, if it were right and
necessary, enjoin you to give much attention to, and,
if possible, attendance in, your Sunday Schools ; and,
if you cannot teach in them, or superintend the teaching,
yourselves, to take care that the instruction given and
books used are such as will lead the children to a
knowledge and humble reception of (1) the divinely
revealed truths of our Bible, as the Word of God;
and (2) the orders and services of our Book of Common
Prayer, as the traditions and doctrines of the Catholic
Church. But what is still more necessary, and more
incumbent on you, as enjoined by our Church, both in
Rubric and Canon, is the practice of catechizing
during Divine Service in the Church ; always
incumbent while so enjoined, but especially so under
the circumstance to which I have referred — the want
of any week-day Schools in which the doctrines and
services of the Church can be freely and fully in-
culcated. I need say no more on this subject, except
I observe that, although the Church Catechism is the
groundwork and chief subject of the instruction of
children in the Church, we are not required to
confine ourselves to the question and answer, but
may diverge to any matter arising from or connected
with it ; or, I suppose, any services in our Book of

Common Prayer. And allow me to add, that to
catechize with good effect and to general edification
will demand some considerable pains and preparation.

In entering upon subjects of common interest to
the Church here and elsewhere, but chiefly brought
to our notice at this time by recent discussions and
controversies, I desire, in the first place, to make a
few remarks, or, if you please, offer advice, in reference
to some outward ceremonies and observances in the
Church ; which, though perhaps of little importance in
themselves, become by diversity of practice occasions
of judging and being judged with respect to views or
doctrines. I would remark then, as a general rule,
that you will do right and well to observe and comply
strictly with the letter of the Rubric, except where a
contrary practice long continued and acquiesced in by
those in authority has virtually abrogated the law, or
deferred its operation. On this latter point I would
be permitted to adopt the dictum of one of our most
able casuists, the learned and pious Bishop Sanderson :
“ It is evident,” he says, “ that laws rightly constituted
may be so abrogated by a contrary custom that they
cease any longer to oblige : which custom is no other
thing than a joint consent of the people neglecting to
observe the law, as being useless, and of the ruler’s
not requiring its observance2.” We may apply this
dictum to the rubric which orders that “ the table at
the Communion time shall stand in the body of the
Church or in the Chancel, where Morning and Evening
Prayer are appointed to be said.” The present mode

2 This is not modem doctrine. Durandus, explaining, and, it
seems, excusing the neglect of a decree of a Council, which ordered
that the ends of the Stole should be crossed over the breast of the
priest, the neglect of which, he says, might subject the offender to
excommunication, adds, “Nisi forte quis dixerit hoc decretum per
contrariam generalis ecclesise consuetudinem abrogatum.”

of communicating in the Lord’s Supper renders such a
law useless ; and I believe for one hundred years at least
it has been neglected and rarely observed : and strange
it indeed seems that any person, more strange that any
Clergyman, should plead or suppose that it does still
oblige, and should attempt to revive it. Yet the attempt
has been made. The same argument, it has been said,
applies to the revival or renewed use of 4 4 the ornaments
of the Church and Ministers thereof,” prescribed in the
rubric set at the beginning of our Prayer Book : but
some differences are alleged ; 1st, That the contrary
custom has not been so general or of so long con-
tinuance ; 2nd, That the law is not useless ; 3rd,
That ornaments of the Ministers of the Church,
ordered by a Rubric to be retained and be in use, at
all times of their Ministration, do concern them more
than an observance or practice not enjoined on them.
On this subject I may perhaps offer some remarks
hereafter. At present I would refer only to practices
which must be observed by every Clergyman, hut in
the manner of observing which there is a difference,
and a difference which to some curious persons
indicates or suggests different views of doctrine.

(1) Before the Consecration of the elements in the
Holy Communion the rubric directs that 4 4 when the
Priest, standing before the Table, hath so ordered the
Bread and Wine, that he may with the more readiness
and decency break the Bread before the people, and
take the Cup into his hands, he shall say the Prayer
of Consecration.” Now it is understood by some that
the Priest should 4 4 stand before the Table,” only so
long as he may be occupied in 44 ordering the bread
and wine 3,” and then return to the north side ; while
others contend that he should continue to stand before

3 This view is maintained in the “Duties of a Parish Priest,”
by the late Professor Blunt.

the Table while saying the Prayer of Consecration.
On this point there may be a difference of opinion and
a corresponding diversity of practice ; and to ascribe
particular views to either practice would be greatly
unreasonable, inasmuch as either will sufficiently satisfy
the law. The chief consideration is, how the Priest
may “with more readiness and decency break the
Bread before the people (coram populo);” for here, I
conceive, no diversity of practice is allowed. The
Rubric is plain and express ; the action prescribed is
one of sacred significance, and the people may desire,
and, I think, require to see it done ; and the same
may be said of the Priest taking the Cup into his hands,
and both may be done, even while standing before the
Table, by turning towards the people during the action.
Having complied with the Rubric, we may content
ourselves, whatever may be thought or said of standing,
or not standing, during the prayer before the Table.

(2) I notice also a diversity of practice in the
administration of Baptism, hardly, I presume, im-
plying, at least in the present day, any particular view
of doctrine, though formerly each diversity had reference
to a prevailing heresy. I allude to the practice — of
novel observance as far as my experience goes, and
hardly yet, I conceive, adopted by the majority — of
pouring or sprinkling water three times upon the child
in pronouncing the sacred form of words. Many of
you are no doubt aware that Trine Immersion was
ordered by a decree of one Council in reference to, or as
a protest against a particular heresy ; and set aside by
the decree of a subsequent Council on account of another
and opposite heresy. I do not conceive it can be
necessary to enter upon the question which of these
decrees, or whether either of them, should be binding
upon us ; or whether three affusions (which, I believe,
some persons regard as three baptisms) correspond

exactly to Trine Immersion. The action, no doubt, is
piously intended to symbolize or suggest the great
doctrine of the Trinity; but as a different practice
still prevails, it is of some importance to observe that
either may be justified or sustained by the words of
the rubric, which says, “ It shall suffice to pour water
upon the child.” The like expression, ‘ 4 shall pour
water upon him,” is used in the Baptism of such as
are of Biper Years. And the ‘ ‘ Ministration of Baptism
to such as are of Riper Years ” was, as you know, com-
piled and introduced at the last revision of our Book
of Common Prayer, and we cannot doubt very care-
fully considered by the good and learned men employed
in that revision, who would not have hesitated to
enjoin or suggest the three affusions or threefold
affusion if they had deemed them of importance.
Either practice, however (as I said of the different
practices in the Holy Communion), may be justified;
only here, as there, something is enjoined which must
be strictly observed, viz. “ to pour water,” not to
sprinkle it : for even to pour is only said “ to suffice,”
where the ancient and scripturally symbolical practice
of dipping is omitted ; a practice duly recognized by
our Church, and ordered to be observed “ discreetly
and warily,” where “the godfathers and godmothers
certify the Priest that the child may well endure it.”
I would only further suggest — where the threefold
affusion is adopted — whether it would not be more
appropriate and significant if sufficient water were
taken up at once 4, which would prevent the objection
of three Baptisms (occasioned, I presume, by three

4 On this subject some older ritualists observe : “ Sacerdos
haurit aquam de fonte baptismali, et continua actione fundit super
caput infantis paululum inclinati, et simul fundendo, pronuntiat
semel distincte et attentehaec verba ; N : egote baptizo in Nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

times taking water from the Font), and yet preserve the
symbol or suggestion I referred to. However, the rubric
says “ it shall suffice to pour water upon the child.”

(3) It is of more importance to determine the proper
interpretation and use of the questions after the adminis-
tration of Private Baptism ; when the child so baptized
is brought into the Church, and the Minister is directed
to examine whether the child be lawfully baptized or
no ; especially when it appears, in answer to the first
question, that the child was baptized by lay hands.
As however I have on former occasions fully, or,
I trust, sufficiently considered this subject, I would
only now once more remind you that you ought to
insist upon receiving the answers from some person
who was actually present at the Baptism, or at least
that some person actually then present should be
ready to answer plainly and positively those two
questions relating to the matter and the words, — the use
of water in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost (which are essential parts of Bap-
tism) : because if it cannot appear, — and I submit that
it cannot appear, except upon the testimony of some
person present who saw and heard, — that the child was
so baptized, your duty is to use the conditional or
hypothetical form there prescribed.

I have also on a former occasion stated my reasons
for objecting to the proposed alterations of the Canon
which forbids fathers to be Godfathers to their own
children, and I repeated my statement in my late
Charge to your Brethren in Bermuda. I need not
therefore detain you on that subject — though a very
interesting and important one — except to inform you
that the alterations proposed and passed by the Con-
vocation of Canterbury have not received the Koyal
Assent ; on the ground that “ capable of receiving the
Holy Communion ” is (as I ventured to suggest four

years ago) an indefinite expression, open to various
questions and constructions. I could have wished that
the other alteration, equally anomalous and objection-
able, I mean to accept the natural parents as God-
parents, had been as plainly rejected or contravened.
However, you will please understand that the old
Canon still remains in force, as much at least as
formerly, and that if a new Canon be passed and
receives the Royal Assent, we, in the Colonies, are
not at liberty to adopt it, separately or collectively,
until further instructed.

You are all, I doubt not, well aware that the Royal
Letters Patent creating Dioceses, or appointing Bishops
with ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in Colonies possessing
independent Legislatures, have lately been pronounced
by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council null
and void ; or rather, in these particulars, ultra vires .
You are aware also of the many questions and dis-
cussions which have arisen and are still rife in
consequence. I hope I shall not appear presumptuous
if I venture to think and say that our relation and
connexion, or, if you please, our mutual duty and
dependence, are not, or need not be, weakened or
materially affected by this discovery. Allow me to
relate the process of my appointment, to show how
little the position and authority of a Colonial Bishop,
once admitted, depend upon the Letters Patent, and
how little in consequence he is affected by their
nullification. I was invited to accept the appoint-
ment and office by the late Bishop of London, with
the knowledge and expressed approval of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury ; by them, with the assistance of
two other Bishops, I was consecrated, after I had
sworn the oath of due obedience to the Archbishop.
After my Consecration I came here, as directed and
commissioned by Her Most Gracious Majesty our

Queen, to exercise my office in this Colony as part
of Her Majesty’s dominions. I can hardly suppose
that so far there was any thing said or done ultra vires.
But, granting the commission to exercise the office of a
Bishop in this Colony to be ultra vires, as also
the acknowledgment and acceptance of that com-
mission by the Governor of the Colony (I do not
admit or suppose that it was so in either case),
yet when, being here, I was owned and accepted
by the Clergy as their Bishop — they submitting
to me their Licences and Letters of Orders and re-
newing the promise of canonical obedience — this,
of itself, was and is sufficient ; I wanted, and want,
no other authority. As for the title, the coercive
jurisdiction, as it is called, and other matters of that
nature, said to he improperly granted by the Letters
Patent, I require them not, being well persuaded
that considerations of this kind did not enter your
minds in making before God and the congregation
that solemn declaration, and promise, “ the Lord
being your helper,” “ reverently to obey your Ordinary
and other chief Ministers, unto whom is committed the
charge and government over you ; following with a
glad mind and will their godly admonitions, and submit-
ting yourselves to their godly judgments.” If I might
venture, in this much lower sense and application, to
adopt the language of an Apostle, I would say, “If I be
not a Bishop unto others, yet doubtless I am to you.”
To the large majority of you the office and work of
a Priest in the Church of God were committed by my
hands. From me you received authority to preach the
Word of God, and to minister the Holy Sacraments in
the congregation. And you cannot, I conceive, claim
and maintain your authority, or exercise your office,
without a due acknowledgment of the source from
which they were derived, — both your office and

authority, — or without a like acknowledgment of your
obligations, I mean, of canonical obedience and
submission. We have lived indeed to see these
obligations, even the oath of due obedience to a Metro-
politan, disregarded and broken by one who has
exacted of others like promises, and, I presume,
at one time expected their fulfilment ; and not for
wrath but for conscience’ sake. It is hard to under-
stand how any Christian man can suppose an obligation
of conscience may be removed by State interference.
It would be very grievous to me to think that I am
now addressing you as any officer of the State, or that
you receive my admonitions and advice only in that
light, and on that ground, or that we require or
desire any other bond of union than that of our
spiritual relationship. But enough, perhaps more
than enough, on what may appear of personal concern.
I have deemed it expedient, however, to state plainly
on what foundation our mutual duties and obligations
now stand, and how little they are, or should be, affected
by any supposed or real defect in Her Majesty’s Letters
Patent. At the same time I would not he supposed
ignorant of, or unconcerned about, the too possible
evils of this new phase of the voluntary system, or
rather of voluntaryism without system. I foresee
the possibility of many evils and inconveniences, which
it will be our wisdom and duty to anticipate and prevent
by some Church organization. But the subject is too
large and difficult to be discussed on an occasion like
the present, and it appears to me more prudent to
wait the settlement of these questions at home, I mean
in England, by the Church and State (as far as either
or both can settle them), before they are discussed in
the Colony. It is satisfactory to know, on the authority
of the Attorney- General of England, that the power
given to the Bishop to hold Church property as a

Corporation sole is not annulled by the late decisions
or dicta of the Judicial Committee.

I was led to this digression, if you please so to
regard it, by a consideration of the question whether
new Canons enacted by the Convocation of the Province
of Canterbury, and duly assented to by the Queen’s
Majesty, must, or may be, adopted and acted on by
those Colonial Dioceses, or Churches, which are still
in subjection to, or whose Bishops owe obedience to,
the Metropolitical See of Canterbury. And a like
question arises respecting Acts of the Imperial
Parliament, called Ecclesiastical. As however I have
spoken on that subject in my late Bermuda Charge, I
may revert to the consideration of those rubrics which
are, or should be, our guide in some observances which
in the present day are occasions of contention or con-
troversy, or which having been long neglected are
now regarded with suspicion as innovations. My object
is to show how by strictly observing the rubric, where
not abrogated by contrary custom and consent, we may
at least satisfy our own consciences, and, we may hope,
in due time, convince the gainsay ers : convince them,
not merely of our good intentions, but, of the propriety
and advantage, which they will surely learn by
experience, of the observance enjoined.

I desire in the first place to direct your attention to the
rubric or rubrics respecting the Holy- days and days of
fasting or abstinence, to be observed in the Church of
England throughout the year. With regard to the
Holy-days I need say little or nothing, as the obliga-
tion to observe them all, with the Sundays, is so plain
and positive ; and happily they are now generally
observed here and elsewhere. I may however remind
you that a few years ago it was not so : the observance
of Holy- days, other than Sundays, was very rare, and
by not a few regarded as a piece of superstition or

Popery ; or, at best, condemned, on a mistaken inter-
pretation and application of some passages in St. Paul's
Epistles. If any persons now object to their observance,
we fall back upon our rubric, or rather, let me say,
we make our rubric an occasion and obligation of
both observing them ourselves, and recommending, and,
as far as we may, enjoining their observance. On the
same, or similar grounds I would plead for a more
general observance of the fasting- days ; and in doing
this I must not be accused of introducing or suggesting
novelties. In my very first Charge, twenty-two years
ago, I made the following remarks : “ Among the notices
which the Curate, i. e., the ministering Parish Priest, is
required to give after the Nicene Creed, you will observe
that he is directed ‘ to declare unto the people what
Holy- days or fasting- days are in the week following to
be observed.’ I hardly need say it is my wish that
this rubric may be punctually complied with, and the
declaration or notice duly published ; but I draw your
attention to it because I have remarked that in some
churches, where the Holy- days are thus declared, and
even observed with their proper and appointed services,
the fasting-days are passed over in silence. Now
surely none can suppose that any branches or
members of Christ’s Church upon earth are entitled
and in a condition to keep Holy-days with feast and
festival, without some corresponding seasons of fast
and humiliation. It cannot therefore but appear in-
consistent or inconsiderate, to use the mildest term,
to begin with restoring feasts and festivals, when both
for the Church and ourselves there is more occasion of
fasting and abstinence, sorrowing and self-abasement.”
Such was the advice I ventured to offer on this head,
in my first Charge ; and I am thankful to know that
this duty also, I mean of declaring the fasting-days,
is more generally observed. It is true that, with the

exception of the great fast of Lent, no special services
for these days are appointed, which may be regretted ;
hut the name sufficiently implies in what manner they
should he kept. And as many of you do now, with or
without the daily morning and evening prayer, have
one special full service every week, I would recommend
and request that the Fridays be chosen for such service.
“ All the Fridays in the year, except Christmas Lay,
are to be observed,” so our Prayer Book directs, “ as
days of fasting and abstinence;” which direction is
sufficient to justify a special service on all Fridays,
in preference to any other day in the week not
selected by the Church ; but when we consider the
cause and reason of the selection, and how much it
concerns us and all Christians to remember and lay
to heart that great cause, the death of our dear
Redeemer, to which we owe our salvation, — “ delivered,”
the Scripture says, that is to suffer and die, 4 ‘for our
offences;” — when we consider this great cause, this
most prevailing reason and occasion, we shall not be
determined by the supposed greater convenience of
any other day in the week for our special service, but
observe it and make it as appropriate as we can on ‘ ‘ all
Fridays in the year.” And is not this the right pre-
paration for the holy, happy services of “all Sundays ? ”
Before I proceed to subjects of more intrinsic im-
portance, I must allude to one other matter of form or
outward observance, which has lately occasioned some
discussion and controversy, — the time at which those
who do not intend to communicate in the Lord’s
Supper should leave the church. I referred to this
also in my first Charge, specially in consideration of
no direction being given us in our Prayer Book. Of
this apparent omission, I said, two explanations may
be offered : (1), that the Holy Communion being

formerly a separate, as well as a distinct service, it

c 2

was supposed that none but communicants would
attend it, in which case none of course would depart, —
and such is now the case at every early celebration ;
or (2), when the Order of Holy Communion is made a
continuation or part of the Morning Prayer, the Church
may purposely have omitted the directions about de-
parture, using a pious and prudent caution, lest she
should appear to recognize and sanction it. However,
so it now is, that the Order of Holy Communion is not
commonly used separately and distinctly, and many
(alas ! how many) attend the commencement of it, or
ante-communion, who have made no preparation and feel
no inclination to communicate. In the absence then of
any other direction, I would venture to recommend that
they depart after the Sermon, and before the Offertory
and Prayer for the Church Militant. I am aware that
a practice very generally prevails of inviting the whole
congregation to remain on communion days (when
there is no communion a rule is given us) during the
recital of the Offertory, and of collecting alms from
all, — a practice which has some obvious recommenda-
tions, in increasing the amount of collections for pious
and charitable uses, and, it may be hoped, enlarging
the hearts, as well as opening the hands of the
congregation generally towards the Church and her
poor members and Ministers, by the recital of those
earnest appeals, on behalf of both, from Holy Writ.
There is, however, or may be, one evil attending it,
which, as it involves a principle of some importance,
ought to he known and considered ; — I mean, the
tendency of it to make people think much of their
contributions, and little of refusing the Holy Supper,
when they see their alms presented and placed upon
the Holy Table with those of the communicants.
These remarks however apply primarily and particularly
to non-communicants ; whether those who usually

communicate should be forbidden to remain on occasions
when they have not made the necessary preparation
to receive, is a different and more difficult question. I
will not, however, hesitate to express my belief that it
is not intended or expected by our Church that they
should remain. The carefully weighed words of our
Articles appear designed at least to discountenance it ;
and I have given some probable reasons for the omission
of any injunctions or directions against the practice,
without coming to the conclusion that it was intended
to recommend or sanction it ; which would have been
little in accordance with the views of those who compiled
our present Order of Holy Communion, well acquainted
as they were with the errors associated with the
practice.

I may now proceed, as I promised, to subjects of
more importance (as more directly involving the
doctrines of our Church) lately made matters of con-
troversy. Some of these have been so often and
openly discussed, and I would venture to say so clearly
determined, that but for recent controversies I should
be almost ashamed to occupy your time with, or about
them. I shall content myself, and I hope and believe
shall content you also, with stating and explaining
the doctrines of our Church, as contained in our Book
of Common Prayer. I content myself with statement
and explanation, because I am satisfied that our
doctrines and rules have been drawn by pious and
very learned men from the records and traditions of
the primitive and undivided Church, and confirmed, as
far as such confirmation is requisite, by most certain
warrants of Holy Scripture. It would, I conceive, be
worse than idle on the present occasion, and perhaps
hardly wise or useful at any time, in speaking to those
who accept the teaching of our Prayer Book, to under-
take the proof of every doctrine and declaration by

texts of Holy Scripture. May we not be satisfied this
has been already done, fully, truly, learnedly, and
religiously ; with prayer for the teaching and guiding
of God’s Holy Spirit, as well as with all assistances
and appliances of human study ? It is possible, of
course, that persons may deny this — may contend
that the Fathers and Reformers of our national
Church did not know, or did not regard, the primitive
interpretations, or did not themselves search the
Scriptures. In such persons it would be consistent to
require proofs, or to demand alterations to meet their
views, or the views of those on whom they rely. You
will not, I am persuaded, do me the injustice to
suppose that I would in any way deter, or dis-
countenance your own frequent, nay continual, refer-
ence and appeal to the Holy Scriptures, with such
studies as help to the knowledge of the same : but I
am dealing now only with those who profess to accept
the doctrines of our Church, and to desire that they
may be as truly and plainly taught, as they have been
fully proved and established. And who shall teach
them ? Is it come to this, that we and our con-
gregations shall receive our instructions and directions,
the knowledge of our doctrines and the modes and
methods of inculcating them, from newspapers and
pamphlets of whatever character or denomination ?
I am too well aware that in the numerous and pressing
avocations of our pastoral work, we lack opportunity
and ability to avail ourselves of the stores of learning
and wisdom by and from which we might perceive and
produce the proofs of every controverted doctrine.
Still I hope and believe we both have and use better
opportunities than they who in this country undertake
to teach their teachers ; some of us more, and some
less ; and it surely must seem unreasonable that those
who have most should be censured or contradicted by

those who confessedly have least. And while we
submit to each and every doctrine and declaration in
the plain and full meaning thereof, and maintain and
exhibit our unfeigned assent and consent to all and
every thing contained in and by the Book of Common
Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, let
us not forget that it was provided and ordered by that
Convocation which enforced' subscription, under the
auspices of Archbishop Parker, “ that the Clergy shall
be careful never to teach any thing from the pulpit, to
be religiously held and believed by the people, but
what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and
New Testament, and collected out of that very same
doctrine by the Catholic Fathers and Ancient
Bishops.”

It must surely appear to all plain people almost
incredible, that persons accepting the teaching of our
Prayer Book can deny the doctrine of a Regeneration
in Baptism. If there be any dispute, or difference, it
can only be about the meaning or application of the
term or name. And it is well known to those who
have examined the subject, though I dare believe not
known to numbers who speak most confidently about
it, that the word Regeneration has of late years been
used by some writers and many talkers in a different
sense from that of our Reformers and the Ancient
Bishops.

It is to little purpose therefore to inquire whether
this or that person holds the doctrine of Regeneration
in Baptism, because if we understand Regeneration in
a different sense, the answer would give no satisfaction,
convey no real information. The question should be,
Do you believe, with our Articles, that “the Sacra-
ments are effectual signs of grace,” and that Baptism
is such “ a sign of Regeneration or new birth ?” Do
you, as taught in our Catechism, profess, each for

himself, that ‘ ‘ in Baptism we were made members of
Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom
of heaven,” that “an inward and spiritual grace is
given in Baptism,” and that grace “ a death unto sin,
and a new birth unto righteousness ?” If we so profess
and so believe, it would matter little by what name we
describe the doctrine, had not our Church in her
offices so frequently and expressly spoken of the
baptized as regenerated, and in the Articles made
“ baptized ” and “ regenerate ” convertible terms.

The case is nearly the same in reference to the
question so frequently agitated of the Beal Presence
of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. One may deny the
real presence and another assert it, and yet may both
agree in receiving, or intending to receive, the true
doctrine of the Church and Holy Scripture. All
depends upon the meaning and application of the term
‘ 4 real.” They who limit the word to things carnal
and visible will rightly deny such a presence of Christ ;
but they who apply it to things heavenly and spiritual
may, shall I say must ? maintain and defend such a
reality in the blessed Sacrament. The questions then
are, Bo you believe, with our Articles, that “ to such as
rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the
Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of
Christ, and likewise the Cup of Blessing, a partaking
of the Blood of Christ?” Bo you confess, with our
Catechism, that “ the Body and Blood of Christ are
verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful 5
in the Lord’s Supper?” ‘ 4 Only,” to use the wise
and pious language of our Beformers in the Homilies,
“ only thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the
Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare
sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent : but, as the

6 Ifideles = Christians.

Scripture saith, the table of the Lord, the bread and
cup of the Lord, the memory of Christ, the annun-
ciation of His death, yea the Communion of the Body
and Blood of the Lord by a marvellous incorporation,
which, by the operation of the Holy Ghost (the very
bond of our conjunction with Christ), is through faith,
wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby not only
their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to
win to their bodies a resurrection to immortality.” If
you assent to this doctrine, you may use or refuse the
term “real presence.” Those however who use the
expression, which the most cautious divines of our
Church have not scrupled at, must not be charged
with teaching or allowing a corporal presence, or what
is commonly understood as the Komish doctrine of
Transubst antiation .

But on such a mysterious subject as the mode of
Christ’s presence in the Holy Sacrament of His body
and blood, it might be expected that questions and
controversies would arise. When so many volumes
have been written upon it, by so many learned and
pious divines, it is impossible not to admit that it is
a subject of immense difficulty and importance. It
would be well if that view of it were always borne in
mind, and we should at least avoid the double offence,
of which too many, it may be feared, are guilty, (1)
of deciding too easily and positively for themselves ;
and (2) of thinking and acting uncharitably towards
those who differ from them. Referring to our Prayer
Book and Homilies, it would appear to be open to us
to adopt any view of the subject between the two
extremes of, (1) a bare sign or untrue figure of a thing
absent, which, as I have already remarked, is con-
demned in the Homilies, and is inconsistent with the
language of our Catechism and the Order of the Holy
Communion ; and (2) a corporeal presence, which is

repugnant to the Articles and the declaration attached
to the Communion Service. That there is a real,
though invisible and supernatural, presence of Christ,
and that the body and blood of Christ are given, taken,
and received in the Lord’s Supper, is the consentient
testimony of all our great divines, and is abundantly
confirmed in our Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies.
But other questions are now (unhappily as I think)
raised and discussed, viz., 1st, Whether the body and
blood of Christ are, or can be, received by the wicked?
and 2ndly, Whether any, and, if any, what worship is
due -to the real, though invisible and supernatural,
presence of Christ ? in which questions is further
involved that of the end and effect of Consecration.

With regard to the first question, Whether the body
and blood of Christ can he received by the wicked ? it
is argued on one side that such a belief is at variance
with the XXVIIIth and XXIXth Articles of our
Church, in the former of which it is asserted that
“ the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the
Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner,
and the mean whereby the body of Christ is received
and eaten is Faith;” and in the latter, that “ the
wicked and such as be devoid of a lively faith, although
they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as St.
Augustine saith) the body and blood of Christ, yet in no
wise are they partakers of Christ.” But in answer to
these arguments it is observed that the XXVIIIth
Article has reference only to such as rightly, worthily,
and with faith receive, and is directed (in the words
quoted) against Transubstantiation, not touching the
question of reception by the wicked ; while the ex-
pression “ in no wise are they partakers of Christ”
(it is not said, as in the preceding Article, 4 ‘ the
body of Christ ”) does not imply that the wicked
cannot partake of the body and blood of Christ to

their condemnation: “ partakers of Christ ” being a
Scriptural expression, applied, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, to those Christians who persevere ; for “ we
are made partakers of Christ,” says the Apostle, “ if
we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto
the end.” And when we couple these considerations
with the declaration in our Liturgy of the 4 4 great
danger of receiving unworthily,” (“ for then,” it is said,
“we are guilty of the body and blood of Christ our
Saviour, we eat and drink our own damnation, not
considering the Lord’s body,”) we may, I think, see
and confess that if it was unwise to open and affirm
the question, that the body and blood of Christ can be
received by the wicked to their condemnation, it is hardly
safe to deny it on the ground of repugnance to an Article
so worded as to avoid any precise and positive state-
ment and assertion on 44 so great a thing 6.”

As regards the worship due to the real, though in-
visible and supernatural presence of Christ in the Sacra-
ment, it is affirmed, as in the former case, that any such
worship is forbidden by the Article (the XXVIIIth)
which declares that 4 ‘the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried
about, lifted up, or worshipped while on the other
side it is maintained that this statement does not refer
to, and therefore does not forbid, the worship of Christ’s
divine nature, supposed to be ever present with His
blessed body and blood : inasmuch as the Article, it is
said, relates only to the adoration condemned in the
declaration appended, in our Prayer Book, to the Order
of Holy Communion ; viz. u adoration unto the Sacra-

6 It is worthy of notice that the words “ nullo tamen modo
Christi participes efficiuntur ” (in no wise are they partakers of
Christ) are substituted in the Article for “procul dubio nec
manducat spiritaliter carnem ejus nec bibit ejus sanguinem,” in
St. Augustine.

mental Bread and Wine, there bodily received, or unto
any corporal presence of Christ’s natural flesh and
blood;” words so very plain and precise, that they
appear intended to leave open the question of adoration
unto Christ himself, or His divine nature, as present
spiritually and invisibly.

You will easily perceive how the end and effect of
Consecration are involved in these questions, since in
the one case it appears that through the words of
Institution, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, the
bread and wine become to us, the partakers, the body
and blood of Christ, and as such are received to our
“great benefit ” or “great danger;” or, on the other
hand, that they, the elements, by faith become or are
made the body and blood of Christ, when they are
received. The objection to this latter view is, that
Consecration has no proper end or effect, and
that faith itself, while it makes, as it were, the body
and blood of Christ, is deprived of its more blessed
office, whereby, as is beautifully expressed in our
Liturgy, “we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and
drink His blood ; we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us ;
we are one with Christ, and Christ with us.”

I have ventured thus far rather with the view of
showing you the very difficult and delicate nature of
the questions raised, than of stating my own judgment
or influencing yours. I shall be satisfied if what I
have brought before you has the effect of inducing you
to suspend the positive expression of your own opinion,
until required, and the censure or condemnation of
other men’s views.

In these remarks I have gone over, as some of you
may remember, old ground, repeating in substance
what I stated in a former Charge, — I refer particularly
to my remarks on Baptismal Regeneration, and the
Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of His blessed

body and blood. I have been induced to repeat them
partly to show that I long ago maintained and taught
the doctrines which of late have been so violently im-
pugned, but much more because to many of you these
statements may be both new and needful ; to none of
you, I trust, without interest and use, having regard
to the renewed disputes and discussions on subjects of
such deep importance.

It cannot, I think, be necessary, and therefore would
not be right, to inflict upon you a repetition of the argu-
ments (chiefly from the writings of our Eeformers) by
which, on a former occasion, I demonstrated the doc-
trine of the Apostolical Succession. I was then induced
to speak on the subject in consequence of the circula-
tion of a sermon, in opposition to that doctrine, and in
condemnation of those who maintain it, equally un-
sound, uncharitable, and unjust. We cannot wonder,
and must not complain, if persons of like disposition
and attainments, renew from time to time these mis-
representations and mistakes. The misfortune is that
because we have not leisure or inclination to renew the
refutation or reply, too many believe that our oppo-
nents have truth and reason on their side. ' Should
any of you desire to be reminded of the views of our
Eeformers and other great divines on this subject, lam
not afraid to refer you to my Charge of 1858, and the
notes to that Charge ; which, though necessarily brief
and incomplete, are sufficient, I trust, to establish the
truth and importance of the Succession ; not indeed as
the test of an approved ministry, as some, in the ser-
mon referred to, were slanderously reported to have
said, but as (to use the language of Bishop Hooper),
4 4 with succession of sound doctrine, a good proof of
the Catholic Church.” Pious and learned divines in
both schools of our Church, from the time of the Ee-
formation to the present day, have maintained the

necessity and fact of the Succession, and grounded their
authority upon it. Our Church asserts, in the preface
to the Ordinal, that from the Apostles' time there have
been these Orders in the Church, Bishops, Priests,
and Deacons. St. Paul gave directions to those persons,
and, as far as we learn, to those only, on whom he
had laid his hands, and appointed for that purpose, to
ordain elders in every city. In Archbishop Cranmer’s
Sermon of the Keys, contained in his Catechism
(which Catechism was published in 1548, and presented
by Cranmer himself to King Edward), we find it declared
how 4 4 the preacher must not run to honour, but be sent ;
how his ministrations may be otherwise ineffectual,
because not commissioned of God ; the Sacraments
dead, because unduly dispensed, nor by those in the line
appointed from the Apostle's.” 4 4 After Christ’s ascen-
sion,” he says, 44 the Apostles gave authority to other
godly and holy men to minister God’s word. . . .
Wherefore when they found godly men and meet to
preach God’s word, they laid their hands on them, and
gave them the Holy Ghost, as they themselves received
of Christ ; the same Holy Ghost, to execute this office.
And so the ministration of God’s word, which our Lord
Jesus Christ did first institute, was derived from the
Apostles unto others after them, by imposition of hands,
and giving the Holy Ghost, from the Apostles’ time to
our days ; and this was the consecration, orders, and
unction of the Apostles, whereby they, at the beginning,
made Bishops and Priests, and this shall continue in
the Church, even to the world’s end.” Let us hope
that we shall hear no more of the Reformers of our
Church as opposed to the doctrine of Apostolical Suc-
cession. It has been asked by some, and specially by
one whose other learning hardly qualified him for
speaking so confidently on questions of theology and
Church history, and who little dreamt of the errors and

heresies to which his self-relying teaching would give
rise, it has been asked, Where do we find mention of
Apostolical Succession in Holy Scripture ? It may be
sufficient in reply to ask, Where do we find mention of
Infant Baptism or of the Holy Trinity ? It is enough
for us if godly and well-learned men, who have given
their time and thoughts to the study of Church history,
have assured us that these doctrines were implicitly
held from the beginning, and were proved and illus-
trated from Holy Scripture as soon as, by doubt
or denial of them, occasion arose.

The absence of Scriptural authority cannot be
alleged against the doctrine of Confession, which ap-
pears of late to have caused in some quarters special
offence: “Confess your faults one to another,” says an
Apostle, 4 4 and pray one for another . ” It is hard to under-
stand how, or why, we should observe one part of this
precept, and neglect the other ; how or why we should
think it a duty or a privilege to pray one for another,
and not equally so to confess our faults one to another.
Should it be contended that by one to another the
Apostle only meant Christian friend to Christian friend
(I presume it will be acknowledged that he was speak-
ing of Christians only), that is enough to establish the
propriety, and I suppose intimate the benefit, of Con-
fession. And, if to any Christian friend, to whom
more properly, or with better hope of receiving all the
benefit, than to your spiritual pastor ; whose very
office it is to pray for you, and who ought to know,
first and best of all, the remedies, the consolations,
the supports of fault -stricken souls ? But, if we examine
the context of the passage referred to, or will trust
those who have examined it most carefully, with such
studies as help to the knowledge of Holy Scripture,
or will rest satisfied with its application by our own
Church, we shall see good reason to conclude that the

Apostle is there speaking specially of the priests and
ministers of the Church: and further that “ the
benefit of absolution ” is therein clearly intimated. I
will refer but to one out of many of our commentators
who have given us this interpretation and application.
“Absolution,” says Dean Comber, “seems to be
positively enjoined by St. James to be given to the
sick penitent by the elder or priest that comes to pray
over him : for the Apostle adds, ‘ if he have committed
sins, remission or absolution shall be given him,’ which
is the right translation of the impersonal verb used in
the original 7 : and the practice of the Primitive Church
(the best of commentaries) confirms this exposition,
they having been always wont to grant absolution to all
sorts of penitents, lying in danger of death.” Such
is the interpretation or application of the passage by
one of our wisest commentators ; and you will find that
Hammond in his Commentary, and Bishop Wilson in
the “ Sacra Privata,” take precisely the same view.

But what we are chiefly concerned with, in this as
in other like questions, is to know and teach the
doctrine and rule of our Church. And here it cannot,
I presume, be denied, that our Church does expect and
require of every member of our congregations, at every
assembling of ourselves together, whether for prayer
only, or for Holy Communion, a general confession,
to be followed in each case by an absolution, to be pro-
nounced by the priest alone. Does any person pretend
that our Church supposes, or allows, that these Confes-
sions, publicly made, and the Absolutions publicly pro-
nounced, are mere forms : the Confession made without
the purpose to confess, the Absolution pronounced
without the intention to absolve ? It is true the

7 a<t>e6rj(T€Tcu olvtw, where our Bible reads, to the same effect,
“ they shall be forgiven him.”

Confession in these cases is public and general, and, if
you please, to God only (though every member of the
congregation must hear what his neighbour confesses) ;
and the Absolution public and general, and in God’s
name too (yet every member of the congregation
must receive and apply it to himself) : — Confession is
made by every one, Absolution is pronounced to and
for every one. These, however, being general, and,
we fear, in general but little considered or regarded,
create, it seems, no alarm or shame — give no trouble
or offence. It is the invitation to open in private the
particular grief, and the sin which causes the grief,
though to a discreet and learned Minister of God’s
Word, and to receive the benefit of a parti-
cular Absolution, together with ghostly counsel and
advice — it is this which appears to some persons so
alarming, and to approach so nearly to the Roman
Catholic rule.

Now it must, I think, be admitted that our Church
expects that all persons, before they come to the
Holy Communion, should faithfully endeavour, by ex-
amining themselves by the rule of God’s command-
ments— by confession to Almighty God, with full
purpose of amendment of life — by reconciling them-
selves to those they have offended, and being ready
likewise to forgive others who have offended them —
the Church expects, I say, all intending to come to
the Holy Communion, to endeavour, by these Scrip-
tural means and helps, to quiet their own consciences ;
applying to themselves the promises of forgiveness for
Christ’s sake upon repentance, or waiting for the
Absolution to be pronounced in due form by the Priest
in the service. But should it so happen, and surely it
may and must happen in some cases and to some
persons, that they cannot by their own undirected and
unassisted endeavours quiet their own consciences —

cannot satisfy themselves of the sufficiency of their
confession, and purpose of amendment of life, or assure
themselves of pardon and forgiveness — and they re-
quire, as in such cases all must require, further com-
fort or counsel — they are then invited to come to some
discreet and learned Minister of God’s Word, and open
their grief, (which implies and requires a declaration
and confession of the sin which causes the grief), that,
by the ministry of God’s holy Word, they may receive
the benefit of Absolution : in other words, that by the
Minister’s statement and application of the rules and
promises of the Gospel, the reality and sufficiency
of the repentance may be determined, and the con-
ditions of pardon and forgiveness made known ; and
that Absolution, which they had heard and received
in the congregation after their general Confession,
declared and pronounced to them separately and
individually.

And is it really the case that all, or the most, who would
partake of the heavenly feast, do so examine themselves,
do so confess themselves to Almighty God, do so recon-
cile themselves to their neighbours, that they can come
with a full trust in God’s mercy and a quiet con-
science ; that few, or none, require further comfort and
counsel, who might, if they would, come to some dis-
creet and learned Minister of God’s Word and open
their grief ? If it be so, our people surely have arrived
at a happier and holier condition than our Church, in
framing her services, dared to contemplate. Or is it
that the discreet and learned Ministers are not to be
found ? That would be a reproach and evil as little
anticipated. “Is there no halm in Gilead ? is there no
physician there f why then is not the health of the daughter
of My people recovered ? ”

I have ventured to say that it appears the purpose
of our Church to instruct and require people, at least

in ordinary cases, to quiet their own consciences by
self-examination and confession to Almighty God,
with resolutions of amendment of life ; just as in ordi-
nary cases of bodily sickness we rely upon household
and familiar remedies. And I believe there are helps
to self-examination which, if honestly used and applied,
will be more likely to bring men to a knowledge of
their offences and of their real inward state in God’s
sight, than a declaration to others of the faults or sins
they see or feel in themselves, liable as all are to self-
deception and a wrong estimate of our guilt. Never-
theless, if we do not pretend to judge of other men’s
constitutions, and still less of their secret maladies
and need of remedy or relief, but allow them, if
they require or desire it, the help of a physician, 44 in
whom there may be at times good success ,” we, as Minis-
ters, shall at least be as careful and considerate in
regard of their spiritual state, never refusing them the
opportunity of opening to us their griefs, and receiving
4 4 the benefit of Absolution, together with spiritual
counsel and advice.” 44 Do not,” says Bishop Wilson,
in his 44 Short and Plain Instruction,” 44 Do not enter-
tain a thought so injurious to the merciful promise of
the Saviour to the Pastors of the Church, or imagine
that the Absolution given by His Minister, after he has
inquired into the motives and manner of the repent-
ance, according to the rules of the Gospel — do not
imagine that this will be of no avail to the health of
the soul, or the comfort of the mind.”

If it be asked, In what do the doctrine and will of
our Church differ in this matter from those of the Roman
communion ? we answer chiefly in this : —

That with them confession to the Priest is com-
pulsory, or at least strictly required of every one at
certain set seasons and occasions, and every remem-
bered sin must be confessed. We have seen how

d 2

different in these respects is the rule of onr Church.
An invitation only, — and to those who cannot
quiet their own consciences, — and, it would appear
in reference chiefly to greater offences. But let it
not be forgotten that such invitation we are instructed
and required to make, when we give warning of
the celebration of the Holy Communion ; and, I
scarcely need add, are equally bound to hear and
consider the grief of all who come to us in answer to
that invitation. It is not then with us a question of
opinion or of choice, hut of duty; and shame to
that Minister who through ignorance or indifference
shrinks from or neglects it. Does any one who has
received the commission and authority hesitate, in
misconceived humility, — thinking rather of himself than
his Master, or of his own ability or inability rather
than of the gift and grace of God, — does any Minister
of Jesus Christ hesitate, in his Master’s name, to absolve
the penitent ? and does he think nothing of pronouncing
over the child conceived and born in sin, “I baptize
thee in the name of the Father, and of the Bon, and of
the Holy Ghost ?” Is this holy Sacrament, ordained
by Jesus Christ and administered by us according to
His will, a mere form and ceremony ? Is nothing
meant when we declare of the baptized child that,
being born in original sin and in the wrath of God, he
is now, “ by the laver of regeneration in baptism, re-
ceived into the number of the children of God, and
heirs of everlasting life ? ” Is it so much more pre-
sumptuous, when the same Lord has given us the
commission, to say, “I absolve thee,” and to expect
that for His sake forgiveness of actual sins will be ex-
tended to the penitent? Did not the same Lord who
said to His Apostles, “ Go ye and make disciples of all
nations , baptizing them,” say also to them, the same
Apostles, “Whosesoever, sins'yo remit they arc remitted

unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are re-
tained ?” And was one ministry to be continued and
handed down without the other ; or are we at liberty
to assume and exercise one, and refuse or ignore
the other ? Fully admitting, nay rather earnestly
maintaining, that none can forgive sins but God only,
and that He can and does forgive upon repentance
without man’s agency or intervention (was it not so in
the Apostles’ days ?), still we are taught to believe and
to say, that 4 4 God hath given power and command-
ment to His Ministers to declare and pronounce to
His people, being penitent, the Absolution and remis-
sion of their sins.” Shall we repudiate the gift con-
veyed, betray the trust committed, or neglect the
duty imposed in and by those solemn words pro-
nounced over every one of us, when we received the
Order of Priesthood : 44 Eeceive the Holy Ghost for the
Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now
committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.
Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and
whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be
thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of
His holy Sacraments ; in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

The subject is far too deep, sacred, and important
to be discussed on an occasion like this in all its points
and bearings. My object and endeavour have been to
state and explain, not to prove or establish (that, I
trust, will hardly now be required or expected of me)
our Church’s doctrine and rule, and to show your
privilege and enforce your duty. I will conclude with
some remarks of the commonly- called (and I presume
by us still so esteemed) judicious Hooker, 44 We have,”
he says, 44 in the least and meanest duties performed
by ministerial power, that to dignify, grace, and autho-
rize them which no offices on earth can challenge.

Whether we preach, pray, baptize, communicate, con-
demn, give absolution, or whatsoever, as disposers of
God’s mysteries, our ends, judgments, acts, and deeds
are not ours hut the Holy Ghost’s.”

The subjects hitherto noticed are all of present and
personal interest ; I mean they are such as may, or
rather must, more or less, occupy our minds and affect
our practice ; and, as such, deserve our particular con-
sideration. Matters affecting the Church generally, or
more in other countries than here, must be dismissed
more briefly. You may perhaps expect from me some
notice of Bishop Colenso’s publications and proceedings,
which have occasioned such general surprise and grief,
and brought upon him almost as general censure.
With regard to his publications, I must content myself
with confessing, and am not ashamed to confess, that
of his Biblical researches I have not read a single word.
It appeared to me at the outset preposterous that a
Colonial Bishop, after less than two years given to the
subject (so I observed that he himself confessed) should
presume to publish theories, original or borrowed, in
opposition to the generally received traditions of uni-
versal Christendom. And when I learnt that in both
houses of the Convocation of Canterbury, without, I
believe, a dissentient voice, his views were pronounced
unsound and heretical (though all might not agree in
the necessity or expediency of a synodical condemna-
tion), I felt that my time and thoughts might be more
profitably employed in my proper work and duty.
Indeed we should have, I conceive, very little, or as-
suredly much less than we all have, to do, or more
curiosity than I at least possess, to occupy ourselves
with difficulties and objections which have been ex-
plained and answered, as far as is needful and right
to he required, many times and many years ago. I
say as far as is needful and right to be required, because

in regard to the Old Testament history — remembering
its great antiquity, the manner of its preservation and
transmission, and that it is and must be in great part
its own interpreter — it would be strange indeed if there
were not in it some things hard to he understood,
which a perverse ingenuity might represent as errors
and contradictions. How much more may we expect
this result where the professed object is to disclose, to
those who can receive them, the will and purpose, the
doings and dealings of Almighty God ; and those things,
respecting which our blessed Lord even thanks His
heavenly Father, because He has hid them from the
wise and prudent, — that is in their own sight, — though
He has revealed them unto babes. “ There is a sacred
obscurity,” says Bishop Wilson, “in the Holy Scrip-
tures, which we ought to value them for, because that
convinceth us that we must not hope to understand
them without a light from God, which we must ask
from God and fit ourselves to receive it.”

It is quite unnecessary for me, even if I were suffi-
ciently acquainted with Bishop Colenso’s writings, and
otherwise competent and qualified, to pursue the sub-
ject, as you can have recourse to many able replies and
reviews, which this new or rather renewed assault on
the record of all we know or can know of the way and
will, the works and purposes, of Almighty God our
Heavenly Father, has called forth. Some of these,
kindly sent me by their authors, I have read ; and if it
should appear a somewhat unphilosophical method of
coming to a conclusion on the merits of a book, — I
mean by reading only the replies and reviews, without
studying the work itself, — let me hope that none of you,
or of your friends, will adopt the opposite, and, on such
a question as the truth and authority of all Holy Scrip-
ture, far less excusable, method of reading and receiving
the objections and contradictions, without a careful

examination of the answers, or some of them, which
have been written and published ; answers so numerous,
learned, and weighty, that we might almost excuse and
be thankful for the misdirected judgment and mis-
applied talents which gave occasion for them.

Near akin to the error, if I should not say sin, of
creating doubts and difficulties in respect of the au-
thenticity and authority of Holy Scripture, is that of
depreciating the decrees of Councils and Synods by
which the Catholic Faith has been cleared, maintained,
and published : an error in one respect more danger-
ous than the former, because it creates generally no
alarm, but is received with favour and approval, as an
appeal to individual judgment, on matters where it is
supposed every man is at liberty to judge. And with
sorrow and shame I confess this error prevails
in the writings of some much admired, I cannot say
learned, Professors of my own University. An instance
may be given from Professor Stanley’s Lectures on the
Eastern Church : “ The fact,” as he writes, — “ that the
whole Christian world has altered the Creed of Nicssa
and broken the Decree of Ephesus, without ceasing to
be Catholic or Christian, is a decisive proof that
common sense is, after all, the supreme arbiter and
corrective even of (Ecumenical Councils.” Common
sense, it is sometimes said, is the most uncommon
sense ; but inasmuch as every man, or surely every
Professor, supposes himself to. possess it, it is easy to
foresee what would become of our Creeds and Canons,
if Councils and Synods were subject to such a corrective.
Now, while, with our numerous and urgent avocations,
it is idle to aspire to the learning and knowledge which
can only be attained by study and reflection, in retire-
ment and leisure, we ought to be prepared to meet the
popular objections as well in reference to our Creeds
and Articles of Eeligion, as to the sacred deposit of

truth from which they are derived. You will, I trust,
be prepared accordingly, and at least, as admonished
by an Apostle, “ be ready always to give an answer to
every man that asketli of you a reason of the hope that is
in you.”

You must allow me to add a few remarks on a
subject which has of late attracted much notice, and
occasioned some alarm in the Church at home, far
beyond its intrinsic importance. You are all, I pre-
sume, aware that upon the authority of the rubric
set at the beginning of our Prayer Book, to which I
have already alluded, such ornaments of the Church
and of the Ministers thereof, as were in the Church of
England in the second year of the reign of King
Edward the Sixth, have lately in some Churches at
home been industriously sought out and ostentatiously
displayed. That it was the intention, or rather,
perhaps, the wish of those who undertook the last
revision of the Prayer Book, after the Savoy Con-
ference, to restore, or make way for the restoration of,
the symbolical ornaments of the Church and appro-
priate habits of the Clergy, specially in the Chancel
and ministration of the Holy Communion, may, I
think, be inferred ; 1st, from their having determined
that the rubric should remain, contrary to the expos-
tulations of the Puritans, who plainly foretold its
probable effect ; and 2nd, from their having introduced
into it the word “retained,” which does not appear in
the rubric of the Prayer Book as published at the
accession of Queen Elizabeth, or again after the
Hampton Court Conference. “ Such ornaments of
the Church and of the Ministers thereof at all times of
their ministration shall be retained and be in use,” &c.
Such, it might be supposed, was, so to speak, the
animus imponentis , the purpose or wish of those who
framed, or reframed the law, and the wording of it is

sufficiently plain and explicit. But it never, it seems,
was carried into effect — no attempt ever made to enforce
its observance. Yet there it stands ; and, although
there is some question about “ the authority of Parlia-
ment,” it seems generally agreed that the ornaments
of the Church and the habits or dress of the Clergy
mentioned in the First Book of King Edward the Sixth
are intended, i.e. to be retained and be in use. What
then should be our course, or, if you please, what
should be my course, if any attempt should be made
or any desire expressed to introduce them in any
Churches in this Diocese ? I have already remarked
that — the law having been so long in abeyance and
having reference to things in themselves indifferent —
no Clergyman need think himself under any moral
obligation to observe it or have it observed. I would
remark further, that to have it observed belongs rather
to the congregation than to the Clergyman, inasmuch
as all the ornaments both of the Church and the
Minister should be provided at the expense of the
congregation ; and, lastly, that, as far as it does or
may belong to the Clergy, they ought not to adopt
any such change without the authority of the Bishop
or Ordinary. We are informed, and I am pre-
pared to believe it, that in general the Clergymen who
have adopted, whether of their own choice or by the
desire of their congregation, the ancient ornaments,
are earnest and sincere ; that they hope and intend to
show respect to the house and worship of Almighty
God ; that they perceive, as I presume we all do to a
certain extent, a fitness and propriety in certain orna-
ments in reference to the time, or place, or service.
You all know that the Puritans at the Savoy Con-
ference objected to the dress, — any distinctive dress, — of
the Clergy, and I think you will all agree and coincide
in the Bishops’ reply; — that “ reason and experience

teaches that decent ornaments and habits preserve
reverence, and are held therefore necessary to the
solemnity of royal acts and acts of justice, and why
not as well to the solemnity of religious worship ? ”
With reference to ornaments generally of our
Church, I would be permitted to quote some obser-
vations of my first Charge, to show what my opinion
was and is, and that I did, as I do now, conceive that
they deserve on principle our very serious attention.
“ These directions,” — they were directions referring to
the arrangements and furniture of our Churches, — “ will
appear minute, but cannot by any persons be judged
unnecessary or unimportant, having regard to the sub-
ject and purposes to which they relate. And if we
look into the directions which God, Almighty and
Allwise, Himself gave for the furniture of the Taber-
nacle, these we find were far more minute, numerous,
and particular ; not less so, it has been observed (and
why should they be ?), than the spots on the wings of
an insect, or the streaks and colours of a flower. My
meaning is, that God, who has taken such abundant
care (if we may presume so to speak) that there should
be order, and arrangement, and beauty in all the works
of His hands, which He has pronounced very good, and
which all praise Him, will not be displeased, but rather
expects and requires of us (having also sufficiently de-
clared His Will in Holy Scripture), that we provide,
according to our ability, for a similar accuracy and
propriety even in the minutest parts and circumstances
of His worship.” And in a subsequent part of the
same Charge I remarked, “ We cannot, I fear, have
much reference, in our present wooden edifices, to the
symbolism of ancient Churches, where the minutest
ornaments had their peculiar and appropriate signifi-
cance ; but a Chancel might, I conceive, be frequently
added :” and I drew attention to the vessels used in

the Holy Communion, that they should be of silver,
and the fonts for Baptism of stone. And in a later
Charge I quoted the Koyal Injunctions of 1601 for the
better and more comely keeping of Churches, com-
plaining of “ the negligence and lack of convenient
reverence towards the comely keeping and order of the
(said) churches, and especially of the upper part called
the Chancel ; leaving the place of prayer desolate of
all cleanliness, and of meet ornaments whereby it might
be known for a place of religion and worship.” Such
were, such are, my views and wishes in reference to
the ornaments in general of the Church ; and I am
thankful in having the best evidence that they have
been and are generally approved, by the general addition
of the Chancel to many old, and in nearly all new,
Churches, and the adoption of the more comely and
costly furniture and other 4 ‘meet ornaments.” And I
confidently believe that the desired result — increased
and increasing reverence and regard for the House of
Prayer and our holy services — has been in large measure
attained. I cannot doubt, therefore, that we are
agreed that all suitable and appropriate ornaments of
Churches may be and should he adopted, any or all
which may enlarge devotion or testify duty and thank-
fulness, and also, if special seasons are marked by
special services, whatever is outwardly appropriate to
the season or service, and tends to bring the intended
instruction home to the mind and heart. Only the
more excellent, useful, and holy the observance, the
more is any ill taste, abuse, or exaggeration to be
deprecated. Corruptio optimi est pessima. Still, what-
ever may be our conviction or agreement, we are not
called on, or rather, not justified, in forcing or pressing
the introduction of new or unaccustomed ornaments or
observances, till the meaning and purpose are generally
understood and appreciated ; nor to make our ideas

and views the rule or measure of what is or should be
edifying to all men. In these and other like matters
the Apostle’s advice should ever be present to our
minds, 44 We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of
the weak , and not to please ourselves. Let every man
please his neighbour for his good to edification .” It is

true this advice did not apply in the first instance to
the Ministers of the Church in the execution of their
office ; and it has been contended that, if we can
satisfy the right-minded and reasonable, we may pro-
ceed with good courage and a good conscience, though
others ill-informed and ill-disposed may take offence.
But the same Apostle in another place instructs us
4 4 to ivalk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming
the time, because the days are evil:” upon which Bishop
Wilson observes, 44 Prudence is very necessary in dan-
gerous times ; it being no small fault to give occasion
to the raising of storms against the Church and her
members, for want of having a due regard to the times
and to the passions of carnal men.”

Until the last revision of the Prayer Book only the
ornaments of the Minister, hut these always, were re-
ferred to in the rubric; and therefore, we may conclude,
have always been considered of special importance. And
here again I may be permitted to remind you that on
the first opportunity after my arrival in the Diocese, I
ventured to recommend, as a substitute for the not
well-defined tippet, the adoption of a scarf or stole
by all in Priest’s Orders, hut of silk only by the Puiral
Deans and Bishop’s chaplains. My two-fold abject
being to distinguish the different orders and degrees of
the Ministry, and to give the Clergy generally an
appropriate and becoming ornament, thus distinguish-
ing them from lay- clerks and choristers — an ornament,
however, not generally used by Priests when I entered
the Ministry. I have already observed that it probably

was the purpose, or wish, of the divines who were
entrusted with the last Revision to reintroduce in the
ministration of the Holy Communion the more ornate
habits of the Clergy ordered in the First Prayer Book
of Edward the Sixth : thus making a distinction
between the Order of Morning Prayer and of Holy
Communion. And as in other respects there is a
distinction, the Communion being celebrated in the
Chancel — and the Chancel, on that account, more or
differently ornamented — it is difficult to understand
why there should he any objection to a distinction of
dress in the officiating Minister, or rather, why that
should not he in keeping with the rest ; all to give
more honour and win more regard and respect to the
higher service. And the same in proportion in the
ministration of Public Baptism.

That you all approve of the introduction of what is
considered comely in your official dress, and are all, to
a certain extent, ritualists in this respect, appears from
your ready adoption of scarf or stole, not generally
used in the Church, I have said, twenty-five years
ago. We must beware therefore of establishing a rule
against ourselves, and, by denouncing stoles of this or
that colour or shape, opening the question of the right
and propriety of adopting them at all. Should it be
contended that this stole or scarf was, or is, part of
the ministerial dress, so, and more expressly so, accord-
ing to our rule, was and is the cope in the Holy
Communion, and it would be difficult on principle to
show why we have resumed or adopted the stole
rather than the cope, and not less so to determine
why the colour or shape must be what we or others
approve, and every where the same 8.

Enough — some will perhaps say more than enough

• Erasmus in his “ Colloquies,” speaking of the appliances used by

— on a subject of comparatively little importance. I
must however be permitted to add, that in my humble
judgment, progress and improvement in the ornaments
of the Minister are the natural accompaniment and
complement of the progress and improvement in the
ornaments of the Church. No person, I presume,
supposes that when it is said in the rubric immediately
preceding that which has occasioned so much dis-
cussion, “ The Chancels shall remain as they have
done in times past,” — no one supposes (or if any did,
the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth, and still more the
proceedings of our times would have undeceived them,)
that it was intended they should remain “ desolate of
all cleanliness and of meet ornaments,” &c. And
surely a similar inference in respect of the ministering
Priests is inevitable. And this inference is strengthened
by the fact, which I before mentioned, that in this
rubric (of 1668) for the first time the ornaments of
the Church are expressly named distinct from, but in
connection with, those of the Ministers. And the vast
increase of the “ linigerum genus,” in choirs, consist-
ing of all imaginable trades and occupations, points to
the necessity of some other distinction for the Priest.
Let me, however, in conclusion say, that while I think
and teach, as I have thought and taught, that too
much art, skill, and (having regard to other duties)
expense, cannot be bestowed upon the appropriate
ornaments of Grod’s house and worship, and should be
glad and thankful to have them understood and valued
by our congregations, I would deprecate the introduc-

the priest undertaking or expecting to exorcise the evil spirit says,
“ Addita est in collum sacra stola, quam vocant, unde pendebat
initium Evangelii secundum Joannem.” — Exorcismus. Whether
he designed to ridicule the stole, as he certainly did the proceed-
ings of the exorcising Priest, I must leave to those better
acquainted with his writings to determine.

tion or reintroduction of those alluded to in the rubric,
or any others, which would give general offence — I will
not merely say to the pious and right-minded through
want of knowledge, but to those who wait for our halting,
and by whom even our good will he evil spoken of.

‘‘ In quietness and in confidence shall he your
strength,” was the motto chosen by the author of “ The
Thoughts in Verse” (such is the modest title) “ for
the Sundays and Holy-days throughout the Year.”
Who, in these latter days, more deserves the reverent
attention of all who love the Church of England, and
desire to guide and be guided by the spirit of her rules
and ordinances ? His white stole, we are told, now
hangs, — shall I say mourns ? — over his vacant stall in
the Church which he built by the proceeds of that book,
from which thousands have learnt, and thousands in
generations to come will learn, to value and honour
more and more all our services for the Christian Year.
That speaks ; but hear his own words, among the last
he wrote and published, on this, at that time, new subject
of dispute and difference : “ On these, and all like
matters, we shall perhaps do well to accept the counsel
of our Church in her first reformed Liturgy concerning
another main point of Christian discipline. Such as
are satisfied with the more modern and plainer ritual
not to be offended with them that adopt the more
ornate and symbolical requirements of the rubric :
they, on the other hand, who find comfort and
edification in the ceremonies to bear with their
brethren, who, for various reasons, think best to
dispense with them for the present.” 0 si sic omnes.
0 that the same, or like, prudence and charity, the
same spirit of loving quietness and holy confidence,
might always govern our speech and guide our Steps ;
that in these might be our strength !

And where were this quietness and confidence learnt,

and the strength ensuing upon them, by him whose
name and praise are in all the Churches ? where but
in the lessons of the Sundays and Holy-days, and other
holy services of our Church ? Let us then honour,
love, and study them more and more — let us learn
her doctrines, and observe her rites and ceremonies,
and practise her rules, and obey her laws. Thus may
we, by God’s grace, he every day more worthy of the
office and ministry to which He has called us : and
thus, by the same grace, the Church and congregation
whom we serve shall profit by us daily, while we dili-
gently preach the Word of God, rightly and duly
administer His holy Sacraments, and exercise Godly
discipline, for His sake who loved the Church and
gave Himself for it : — then, and thus, shall we learn the
true meaning and application of those holy words of
comfort, “ No weapon that is formed against thee shall
prosper ; and every tongue that shall rise against thee
in judgment thou shalt condemn . This is the heritage of
the servants of the Lord , and their righteousness is of Me,
saith the Lord.”

POSTSCRIPT.

I thought it best, if I should not rather say I found
it necessary, for several reasons, to print my Charge in
England. One principal reason was that I could not
make leisure while in Newfoundland to prepare my
manuscript for the press. I had time for this, and
some other like occupations, in my pleasant voyage to
England, in the “ Great Eastern.” One result of this
delay has been, that I find some of the statements in
my Charge controverted by the (so-called) Ritualists ;
able and conscientious men, but led away, as it appears
to me, by an unauthorized desire of progress and
development in Liturgical observances.

It has been asserted ; 1. that “ in all cases ‘ at ’ (the
Holy Table) certainly meant with the face turned east-
wards 2. that the north side (of the Table) meant
the north part of the west side; and 3. that “ to break
the bread before the people ” meant in the presence of
the people, but with the bach towards them . The two
first assertions are sufficiently answered by the facts
that in the Scotch Liturgy, compiled by as able Ritual-
ists as any in the present day, “ north side or end ” is
the phrase, where in our Prayer Book we read “ north
side,” and that our best Liturgists (Bishop Andrewes

and others) did stand at the north end ; of which latter
fact there is satisfactory evidence. And with regard
to the first assertion, it may be further observed
that at least in one case (in the Solemnization of
Matrimony) it is ordered, that “ the Priest standing
at the Table, and having his face towards them (the man
and woman kneeling before the Table), shall say, &c.”
The third assertion surely can hardly be maintained
by any persons who will consent to take words in their
plain grammatical sense (which we of the Clergy are
specially bound to do), even without considering the
significance of the action. It is contended indeed,
that there is a difficulty in complying with the present
Rubric (the difficulty, I am sure, was little felt, or
known, twenty-five years ago) which says, “ When
the Priest, standing before the Table, hath so ordered
the bread and wine, that he may with the more readi-
ness and decency break the Bread before the people,
and take the Cup into his hands.” I have pointed
out in my Charge two ways in which this (supposed)
difficulty may be overcome ; in one or other, of which
it has been overcome (if that can be said to have
been overcome, which has never been encountered) by
nine -tenths of the Priests of the English Church for
the last two hundred years. Ecquis erit finis ?

I trust I may still indulge the hope that to you, my
brethren, those concluding sentences, “ Concerning the
Service of the Church,” in our Book of Common Prayer,
will be a useful guide in these and other like diversities :
“ Forasmuch as nothing can be. so plainly set forth,
but doubts may arise in the use and practice of the
same ; to appease all such diversity (if any arise) and
for the resolution of all doubts how to understand, do,
and execute the things contained in this Book; the
parties that so doubt, or diversely take any thing,
shall alway resort to the bishop of the diocese, who

by his discretion shall take order for the quieting
and appeasing of the same ; so that the same order
be not contrary to any thing contained in this Book.
And if the bishop of the diocese be in doubt, then
he may send for the resolution thereof to the Arch-
bishop.”

The mind of the Reformers on the subject of Con-
fession, even on the approach of death, may perhaps
be inferred from the following expressions in the
Colloquies of Erasmus ; contrasting a peaceful and
happy death with one of parade and tumult ; and they
afford an illustration of some remarkable words in
our Liturgy: “Accitus parochus rursus porrexit

corpus Domini ; sed citra confessionem : negabat enim
quidquam scrupuli residisse in animo.” — Funus.

Edward Newfoundland.

the END.

GILBERT AND RIVJNGTON, i’RINTERS, ST. JOHN’S SQUARE, LONDON.

A CHARGE

DELIVERED TO

THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD

Its St&tntij Visitation,

DECEMBER, 1866,

SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,

lord high almoner to her majesty the queen, and chancellor

OF THE ORDER OF THE GARTER,

Published at the request of the Clergy and Laity,

©iforti anti ILontiori :
JAMES PARKER AND CO.
1867.

fltmteb bn $ antes |)arher anb <£o., Crofoit-garb, (Hhforb.

& Cljarp, kt

QNCE again, my brethren of the clergy and of the
laity, our three years’ period has run out its sands,
and we meet in this the chief Church of the Diocese
to review God’s past dealings with us, to sum up our
work accomplished, to take measure of what remains
to be done, and, in His presence, to form new resolu-
tions for attempting, in His strength, its better accom-
plishment. Again we are warned, by vacant places
and new names upon our muster-roll, of the short-
ness of our day of work, of the coming of our night
of rest, and, may God grant it, of our joyful day-
break of reward, when our beloved Lord shall stand
again amongst us. Forty- two Incumbents a have been
gathered in the last three years to their Fathers ; —
fourteen more than in the parallel preceding period.

During the three years last past, I have confirmed
about the same number of candidates as in the three
preceding. Again, I notice a growing equality in the
numbers of the two sexes, amongst the confirmed ; in
itself, I am convinced, a hopeful sign, and one which,
I rejoice to say, seems to me to be borne out by the
still increasing appearance both of intelligence and of
devotion in those whom you have prepared for this
Office. Nothing can be more marked than the dif-
ference between the Confirmations of these last years,
and those of twenty years ago ; and often, as I sit in
my chair of Office, casting my eyes with many a prayer
a See Appendix I.

B 2

over the kneeling band, I mingle praise with suppli-
cation, on noting the evident fruits of your labour
and your prayers on those whom you have at
length brought before me for the imposition of my
hands, and the gifts bestowed in that Apostolic
benediction.

Once more I would press upon all of you the great
importance of securing the attendance at the Con-
firmations, wherever it is possible, of the Parents and
God-parents of those confirmed. Many a grace might
be won by the prayers of that season, many a new
foundation laid of holier family life, the natural bonds
of which had been consecrated and transfigured by
such communion in worship.

I venture also to request you, my brethren of
the clergy, to undertake one other labour connected
with this most blessed Ordinance ; — I mean, that
you would keep for me an accurate account of
those who follow Confirmation up by that which
is its proper conclusion — the coming to the Table
of the Lord. And here let me say one word as to
the proper age at which your candidates should
be presented. Enquiries from different parts of
the Diocese have led me to think that some of
you imagine me to have fixed some definite age
below which I would receive no candidates. This is
an entire misapprehension. I do not conceive myself
to have been invested by the Church with the right
to make any such general rule. The general rule is
made alike for me and for you. It is the simple one
that none should <cbe presented who cannot say the
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Command-
ments, and be further instructed in the Church
Catechism.” So far then, as age goes, this is the

only rule. The Church leaves to you the duty of
applying it amongst your own Flocks according to
your discretion ; subject to an appeal to me which, in
each particular instance, may reverse your decision
either for the admission or the exclusion of any par-
ticular candidates. I should advise you to exercise your
discretion far more by the rule of spiritual fitness than
of ageb. If you find a younger candidate longing to
receive the Grace of God in Confirmation and looking
forward to Holy Communion, I should make no ques-
tion as to age. If you are satisfied that an older
candidate has no spiritual desires and no intention of
following up Confirmation by Communion, I should
not consider mere age as a sufficient qualification ;
though, in deciding the question as to rejecting such
an one, I need not counsel you that it is more danger-
ous to err on the side of harshness than of mercy.

Your returns of congregations and of communicants
exhibit no marked change from those given me at the
last Visitation. But they are, from many places, and
from some important ones, grounded upon data so
little claiming exact accuracy that I do not trouble you
with the figures. There is, I rejoice to see, in many
parishes, a considerable increase in the number of the
celebrations of the Holy Communion ; and in many of
these cases there is added the marked observation, that,
with an increase in the number of the celebrations,
there has been a corresponding increase in the total
number of communicants. I earnestly entreat the

b The great John Wesley was admitted by his father, the Rector
of Ep worth, to Holy Communion at the age of eight years, and in
the case of so strict a Churchman as old Mr. Wesley we cannot
doubt the previous Confirmation of his son. See Watson’s “Life
of Wesley,” p. 5, 11th Edition.

direction of your careful attention and of your prayers
for guidance to this matter. I am myself persuaded
that we shall never have the fulness of God’s blessing
on our ministrations until in every parish the great
service of the Lord’s Day, at least, includes this crown-
ing act of intercession and worship. It is clear that this
is what our Reformers intended to establish amongst
us, when they provided the Epistle and Gospel for
every Lord’s Day and every greater festival, adding,
as what alone was to prevent the celebration, that
there should be none “ except there were a con-
venient number” (in very small parishes, three are
specified as the least) “ to communicate with the
Priest.” Eor the prohibition of a celebration when
there are not communicants (intended to prevent the
corrupt custom of solitary masses), is an injunction of
it when there are, especially in a body in which this
had always been the universal custom. Various
causes have tended to make the omission of the
weekly communion so common, that it is only by
degrees that it may be wise to restore, in any parti-
cular parish, the earlier and better way. For it is
never well to startle our people with sudden changes
in their modes of worship ; but we are bound to re-
move, as far as we can, the causes which have led
to so injurious an omission. One of these I believe
to be the length of our Morning Prayers, with the
celebration ; and it is therefore desirable to let no
unnecessary prolongations make it over- wearisome.
Thus in towns where the neighbourhood of the popu-
lation to the church makes it easy for them to attend,
it has often been found useful to break the two ser-
vices into three; Thus again, the sermon, which
ought not to be omitted, should be condensed as far

as possible ; it should also be made to take more con-
spicuously its real place as a part of the Communion
Office ; for this reason the wholly unauthorised custom
of introducing prayers and a hymn before the morn-
ing sermon, is far better omitted. The same object
gives importance to what is simple obedience to the
rubric, the interposing no change of dress between
the rest of the Communion Office and the sermon.
Where indeed, the custom of the minister putting
on a black gown to preach in has become inveterate,
it must be a matter of care to you that you do not,
by a sudden and unexplained change, shock the un-
grounded prejudice which associates the wearing of
the black gown instead of the surplice, with a freedom
from Roman tendencies, — for to such height igno-
rance and prejudice have in some instances risen
amongst us : although, in truth, the black gown is
the Popish innovation, it having been brought in by
the black monks, — those sturdy supporters of the
Papacy.

For another reason, well put forward lately by onec
singularly qualified to give weight to such an argu-
ment, it is important, where you can do it safely,
to return to rubrical exactness on this point. For
few things have tended more to stir up ardent and
undisciplined minds to excess in ceremonial, than
the frequent defect in its proper amount which
some of our churches have in past times exhibited.
Nothing, certainly, more weakens the hand of autho-
rity in repressing excess than a prevalent defect which,
for the sake of charity, it leaves uncorrected. For
all impartiality in administration would be gone if
some men were, without question, suffered either
c The Rev. Sir H. Thompson, Bart. See Appendix II.

from coldness or indolence, or private opinion, to fall
below the true standard ; and when zeal and earnest-
ness led others to some excess, it was at once re-
pressed with severe vigilance. I would impress, in
passing, therefore, upon all who look with apprehen-
sion on a great development of ritual amongst us,
that they can act more immediately on the side of
moderation by raising that which is too low, than by
being over ready to clamour against what they think
too high.

In some parishes, as I have above suggested, the
inconvenient length of the whole Morning Service
and Communion may be remedied by saying the
Morning Prayer proper at an earlier hour, and be-
ginning the Communion Service with the Litany. I
shall gladly receive applications to authorise this
change from any who think it will tend in their own
parishes to promote a better attendance at this great
act of worship.

Against one suggestion of most recent times for
increasing these services, — I mean Evening Commu-
nion,— I must again solemnly warn you. As in my
Charge of 1860 I have stated at length the grounds
on which I believe, 1st, that such a celebration is
contrary to the law of our Church ; and, 2nd, why I
feel bound myself to enforce obedience to that law,
and to resist, by all means in my power, the in-
troduction of this greatest of innovations, I will not
repeat what is in your hands already. I will only
say that my reading and observation since that
time have, if possible, deepened my own convic-
tion, and that I deprecate, — even more earnestly
than I did then, — the introduction of such a prac-
tice into any of your parishes, as contrary to the

rule of the whole Church for 1800 years, and cer-
tain, in the long run, to lower men’s reverence for
that great Sacrament. One fact only I will add to
what I have said before, namely, that the judgment
of the greatest of the foreign Reformers on this point
is- as clear as is that of our own Church. “At this
day,” are the words of Peter Martyr to Bishop
Hooper, “we so administer the Eucharist in the
morning time, that after dinner we will not have
the Communion in the sacred assembly d.” And to
the same effect Bucer writes, “ Hence we celebrate the
Sacred Supper neither in the evening nor in a private
house, nor recumbent, nor among men only6.”

The Ordinations of the last three years have, on the
whole, been marked with many encouraging tokens of
the blessing of God. No part of the anxious life of
a Bishop of the Church is fuller of anxiety than the
Ordination period. On the one side, there is the fear
of laying hands suddenly on any; on the other, the
dread of discouraging one whom the Lord’s voice is
calling and His love drawing by cords so secret as to
another to be indiscernible, to the great charge of the
priesthood. Then, as the day draws nearer, and the
candidates are gathered around you, there is the long-
ing desire to reach each heart, to set some stamp for
God on each soul, to be the means of bestowing some
gift upon the waiting company. Again, there is the
choice of subjects on which to speak to them, the
handling them when chosen, the private converse,
the many prayers, and all these gathered into a single
point of intense interest as one after another kneels
before you in the house of God, for the laying on

d Gorham’s “Reformation Gleanings,” p. 195.

e Ibid., pp. 205-6.

of hands and the gift of the Spirit ; and then is
sent forth to exercise that ministry of which, in all
its details, the great Bishop of souls will demand
the account. All. this, as it crowds in upon the
mind, is often little less than overwhelming. Such
deep realities tend greatly to render the spirits low,
and the judgment unduly discouraged. Yet I can
speak hopefully of this portion of my work. There
has been no falling off in our numbers. During the
last three years I have ordained 140 deacons against
133 in the preceding period, an increase of 7 ; and
though only 121 priests have been ordained instead of
131, this is no real measure of diminution, as the small
deficiency is accounted for by the number who have
from various causes migrated into other dioceses during
the period of their diaconate. Two other cheering
tokens too, have marked this portion of my work.
First, that amongst the recent candidates there have
been several distinguished by the highest gifts of in-
tellect : a complete practical answer to the taunt we
have sometimes heard of late, that the ministry was
now sought only by those who were hopeless of dis-
tinction in secular professions. But even this fact,
important as it is, weighs less with me than the
second I would mention, and which I estimate as
one of the best tokens of God’s presence with us,
namely, the general character of piety, earnestness,
and zeal, which I have noted in the candidates for
Orders. These promising indications too, I thank-
fully record it, have been carried out in the opening-
ministry of many of our younger pastors. In the re-
turns made to me from various Rural Deans I have
read with joy their testimony to the higher standard
of clerical life and duty which marks the younger men

1 1

who have entered their deaneries. Though by no
means limited to such, yet especially has this been
the case with those who have added to their academical
training, residence at a theological college. Three
more years' experience of what such a college may be,
and may do, has deepened my thankfulness to God for
having graciously accepted the attempt to found one
in this diocese. Our own college is, and has been,
entirely full. Almost ail its students are University
men, and more and more men who are not seeking
(good as that is) to make up for lost time, but who are
crowning past diligence in their academical life by
giving themselves altogether to the studies and the
training which may best fit them to be “ workmen,
who need not be ashamed f” in the ministry of the
glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our Diocesan Societies have continued their course
of useful labour in their several departments. The
Church Building Society has in the last three years
given material aid to the building of 16 new or
rebuilt churches, to the restoring and enlarging of
23 others, and to the building of 8 parsonage
houses g. To effect these it has granted £3,840,
towards a total of £81,851 expended, and thus has
secured 4,883 new free, and 610 appropriated sittings.
As to this Society, I have this year gratefully to ac-
knowledge both from the clergy and laity of the
diocese an extraordinary aid in answer to a special
appeal which I ventured to make to them. Our prin-
ciple in this Society is not to accumulate an invested
capital in money, but to invest from time to time in
increased church accommodations the funds committed
to our stewardship. So large had been the demands
f 2 Tim. ii. 15. s See Appendix III.

on us that we had to choose between either greatly
lessening the standard of our grants or pledging our
whole income for the next two years. The Society
wisely chose the last alternative, and I ventured to
appeal to the diocese to ratify their decision by re-
instating us in the funds needful for carrying on our
work. The answer was a contribution of <£3,322,
from 121 donors in the diocese to whom I had per-
sonally applied, and £1866 10s. 8d. from collections
made in answer to a like request in almost all our
churches. Out of the 621 parishes of the diocese col-
lections were made in 538, from the remaining 83
there were very few refusals, and, with the exception
of this very small minority, some temporary local rea-
sons alone prevented the collections being universal.

Whilst heartily thanking you, my brethren of the
clergy, for this compliance with my request, I cannot
refrain from using this success as an argument for
your granting to the diocese in which you minister,
this annual aid. Surely the education of our own
young, the providing church accommodation for our
own people, and increasing the ministry of the Church
amongst our own flocks, are causes which may claim
once a-year precedence over Societies, however ex-
cellent, which are wholly external to ourselves. Once
more I entreat those who have withheld from their
parishioners the opportunity of listening to the re-
quest of their Bishop, and relieving the needs of
their brethren, to weigh the question, whether Chris-
tian charity and the law of order in their Church
should not lead them to adopt a different line of
conduct.

The Diocesan Society which at this moment is in
the greatest need, is that for increasing the spiritual

provision for the wants of the diocese, by furnishing
a part of the funds necessary to secure a curate,
and additional services for the ill-endowed parishes
of the diocese. Such assistance is now furnished to
thirty-seven parishes. The exact sums expended,
and number of labourers provided, since my last
Visitation, are as follows :

In 1864, thirty-seven additional clergy were pro-
vided, at a cost to the Society of £1,352 18s. 4d.

In 1865, thirty-six additional curates, at a cost to
the Society of £1,395 Os. 4d.

For 1866, thirty-seven additional clergy, at a cost
of £1,475. The expence of conducting the Society
has not exceeded £29.

You will, I hope, not fail to notice at how very
small a cost for machinery, the Society is worked, and
how entirely, therefore, all that is given goes directly
to the real object. But our applications multiply, and
our funds are entirely inadequate to meet the demands
made upon us. A searching enquiry into every case
now receiving assistance has recently been made by
a special committee, on which, I am thankful to say,
several laymen consented to act : but all their at-
tempts at reduction, though extending to a large
diminution of grants, not because they are not
needed, but because the places to which they are
granted have received them for some years, — will
barely leave us solvent, and certainly admit of no
increase of the number of our grants. May I, then,
once more ask the help of every one of you, my
brethren, in this matter. The Pastoral Letter which,
in accordance with the advice of the Archdeacons
and Rural Deans, will be addressed to the Church-
wardens as well as to the Minister, will be issued

in the ensuing year in behalf of this Society ; and
if you will aid it as generally through the diocese as
you helped the Church Building Society, we shall
be able to supply to some more of our overworked
and ill-paid parochial clergy, the means of securing
for their people more services, more house-to-house
visitation, and more of all that loving care which is
so freely given by our clergy to the poor of Christ’s
flock. Party spirit, so often the hinderer of our
efforts, surely cannot enter here ; for the grants are
made solely in relation to the needs of the parishes,
and the incumbents choose with absolute freedom
their own curates.

The Society formed some years since to aid in raising
the endowments of our very poor parishes, has worked
w7ith vigour and Success. It has been the means
altogether, by the local funds it has called forth, by
its own grants, and by those which it has enabled
us to claim from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
of adding, in the three years last, not less than
£16,000 to the endowments of the diocese. Its able
and energetic Secretary, the Rev. C. D. Goldie, has,
I grieve to say, been transferred to another sphere of
labour ; but he still, from love of his old diocese,
continues to us, as to this Society, his great services.

The Diocesan Board of Education h, under the able
superintendence of the Rev. F. Menzies, has carried on
its work throughout the three years, and, greatly in
consequence of the labours of the Diocesan Inspec-
tors, there has been a general rise in the tone of our
Church schools.

Our Diocesan Training College has in these last
three years been passing through the crisis which the
h See Appendix IV.

sudden changes introduced by the Revised Code in-
flicted upon all these schools. In the fierceness
of the storm, some of them have gone down, and
many fainting hearts augured ill for our own insti-
tution. T am thankful to say that I trust the peril is
now past, and that our Training College is established
on as firm a base as ever. It is but justice to an
admirable officer of the diocese, to say that this is
mainly owing to the resolution, care, and wisdom of
its present Principal.

Of all the educational institutions of the diocese
I can speak with pleasure. Radley and Bradfield
are year after year rising to greater excellence and
striking firmer roots into the soil ; whilst for those
who need a less expensive education, the schools
established, with such noble exertions, both at Blox-
ham and Stony Stratford, afford an admirable train-
ing. Bloxham has grown in six years from having
one day-scholar to receiving eighty -eight boarders,
with the prospect of a hundred after Christmas ;
and the numbers are even larger at Stony Strat-
ford. Below them again, the school at Cowley, in
connection with the Diocesan Board, maintains its
numbers and its character.

Through the last three years the Sisterhoods at
Clewer1, at Wantage k, and at Oxford1, have continued
and increased their works of charity. Associated
houses carry out in Cornwall and near Bristol the work
of Wantage ; whilst that of Clewer is extended, under
their several bishops, to the dioceses of Exeter and
London. At Clewer itself, the last few weeks have
seen the opening of a convalescent hospital, which, in

* See Appendix Y. k See Appendix YI.

1 See Appendix YII.

connection with the London hospitals, promises greatly
to alleviate that amount of human suffering which
waits ever upon great cities, and high civilization.

Turning from the institutions of the diocese, to the
wider question of its general state, as I find it mapped
out for me in your careful and interesting returns,
I can, after an anxious inspection of your different
reports, in spite of some darker lines, upon the whole
rejoice with you at the result. There is much to do ;
much to lament ; but there is almost everywhere life
and progress ; and to a degree, rare I believe at this
time, almost everywhere, — harmony.

In almost all the deaneries of the diocese I find the
record of churches built or restored within the last
three years, some by subscription, some by the single
munificence of the owners of property. I find almost
everywhere schools built, night-schools opened, class-
rooms supplied. In some, I read with peculiar plea-
sure, that the landowners have rebuilt the cottages
of the labourers with arrangements which render easy
those decencies so often impossible in our older cot-
tages, and yet which are so essential to the purity of
family life, and the formation of religious habits.

Again I read, over wide districts of the diocese,
of a great improvement in the Choral Services of the
Church and the accidents of its worship ; of the
founding of Confirmation and Communion classes ;
of more frequent catechising ; of Harvest Thanksgi vings
attended with new interest and greater apparent devo-
tion to God ; of growth in missionary exertions ; of
fresh efforts made for the support of missionary stu-
dents ; of an increase of weekly services ; of a large
advance in the frequency of Communions. I read
too, with peculiar pleasure, such entries as the fol-

lowing : “ There has been a great improvement in
the clergy of this deanery, and a corresponding in-
crease in the power of the Church.” And again,
from another district: “We have better clergymen
than we had. There is more of a Church tone about
them. There is a larger-hearted moderation amongst
them, and a kinder appreciation of one another’s
views and work.”

Here are not a few encouraging symptoms. But
this is not the whole of the picture ; there is a reverse
side ; and to it, as setting before us what remains for
us to do, it is well that we should most carefully
attend. In some districts, then, the churches are re-
ported as still unrestored, and, by their bad arrange-
ments and decay, injurious to the tone of public wor-
ship in the parish. Schools for the middle class are still
noted as amongst our chiefest deficiencies. From some
districts where, shall I say, — deeper — or sadder views
are taken by those who overlook the ripening fields,
I hear of “ a lack of devotional and spiritual growth”
equal to the exertions made to promote it ; or even
proportionate to the improved moral tone of the
parish. Elsewhere, I read of long-formed habits of
neglect of Holy Baptism as still infecting the popula-
tion ; and perhaps, as the natural consequence of
such an evil, of “ a lack of recognition of our Lord’s
presence in His Church, making it of the utmost
moment that the clergy should unite together in im-
pressing on their people’s mind that the Church is
in very deed the Kingdom of Grace, and that Christ
is to be found in His own ordinances.” Again I find,
in several places, lamentations over a new evil as
to which we are as yet scarcely on our guard, the
wide spread of “ a cheap and often local literature,

the tone of which tends greatly to sap amongst our
working-classes the old foundations of their loyalty
and their belief.”

Then there are the old evils of the beershops, with
their drunkenness, their vice, and their misery ; of
women’s labour in the fields, with its demoralizing
consequences ; of labourers’ cottages too small for
the decencies of life ; of hiring fairs, with their long
train of evils ; of “ neglect by too many employers of
labour of the habits of their servants, and, with it,
a lowering of the whole tone of their moral being.”
So far, I must remind you, has this seemed to reach,
in one or two districts, as to have drawn forth burn-
ing words of blame from one of the Queen’s Judges
of Assize.

Here then, my brethren, clerical and lay, there is
much for us to do ; much for us to pray, much to
live for. In our own lives must be the great spring of
any work we can effect for God’s glory and for our bre-
thren’s souls. If we ourselves live more near to God,
become more weaned from the world, are more pene-
trated and possessed by the love of Christ, we shall
find daily new openings for service, and new power
for labour. In this life of God within our souls, we
shall find our own true guard against the special dan-
gers of the day : its luxury, its love of excitement,
its growing tendency to the outward, its sceptical
temper, will take, through God’s grace, no hold on us,
if we are indeed watchful to live close to Him ; if in
the secret of our own spiritual being we are more and
more learning to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and
Him crucified.

Something more of this blessed life, I trust I may
say, on the review of the last three years, we have

been enabled to realize ; some of the work set us we
have been strengthened to accomplish. As we have
seen, some churches have been built ; many restored ;
many schools added to our list; and, beyond this
outer work, we have done something for the living
temple ; many children have been trained in useful
secular knowledge, and, better still, in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord ; many young ones have
been confirmed in the faith ; many have been brought
to Holy Communion ; many kept to the habit of
public worship, the tone of which has been greatly,
though soberly, raised ; many have been taught more
perfectly the way of the Lord ; more have been led to
offer freely of their substance for spreading the king-
dom of Christ throughout the world. We, the clergy,
have moved up and down amongst our people in the
daily exercise of our ministry. Some sorrows we
have lightened ; some evils we have lessened ; some
souls, God grant it, through our means have, by His
Grace, been saved.

Every one of us, — chiefly, believe me, he who speaks
to you, — knows how far, alas, we have fallen below
what we might have been : every one of us, I trust,
longs, for whatever time may remain to him, to love
more, to work better, and to see, if it please God to
grant it, more of the power of His converting Grace,
really renewing souls under the ministry of the Word.
To win which blessings, let us never forget it, we
must live ourselves closer to Him, must be abundant
in prayers, must be fuller in our own souls of the
light of His truth.

“Lux gregis est Pastoris flamma™.”

And now, leaving the retrospect of the past, with
m Gregorii Epist., lib. viii. xxxiii.
c 2

hearty thanksgiving to God, — to Whom be all the praise
ascribed by every one of us for anything we have been
permitted to effect for His great glory, — let me ask
your kind attention to one or two suggestions I desire
to make to you for the future.

And first, my brethren of the Churchwardens, let
me remind you of one important point of your duty ;
you are not on any excuse to suffer any alteration to
be introduced into the fabric or fittings either of church
or chancel (for in this they stand precisely on the same
footing) without my authority. There has never been
any doubt as to the law upon this matter, and it has
been enforced in the Court of Arches to its fullest ex-
tent in the last term : where the parties who had made
such changes have been admonished to replace at
their own expense all matters as they were, and were
condemned in all the costs of the suit. Great ex-
pense will be saved, and many unhappy quarrels pre-
vented, if in every instance the law herein is strictly
observed, and nothing changed without the previous
consent of the Ordinary. For you must understand
that even that which has been improperly introduced
into the church cannot afterwards be removed except
on the authority of the Ordinary.

To this and all other parts of your office I pray
your careful attention. It is an office of high honour,
of great antiquity, and of extreme importance. I
entreat you to work with your clergy in all their
praiseworthy endeavours for the good of your parishes,
and to aid them with your influence and your ex-
ample in promoting the temporal well-being, the
moral, and, above all, the spiritual welfare of the
parishioners. Further, I would beg you to co-operate
with them in their endeavours to bring the people

regularly to public worship, and to assist their efforts
for beautifying the houses of God, and making the
services in them more fit expressions of our love and
thankfulness to Him.

I thank you cordially for your support in times
past of your clergy and of me, and I bespeak the con-
tinuance of your kind and zealous offices.

There are one or two matters on which I have not
yet been led naturally to touch, as to which I will
give you a few words of counsel.

And first, as to the proper time for the publication
of the banns of marriage. There are various reasons
which make correctness and uniformity as to this
a matter of importance. There is no reasonable
ground for doubting that the opinion11 hereon of the
late Baron Alderson is entirely right ; and that the
only legal time for publishing banns of marriage in
the Morning Service is after the Nicene Creed, or,
where there is no Morning Service, after the Second
Lesson in the afternoon. The entirely unauthorised
alteration of the rubrics in some of the later editions
of the Book of Common Prayer, may have misled
many. These fallacious rubrics, inserted by no au-
thority, appear to have been grounded on a misappre-
hension of the Act 4 George IV., c. 76, which first em-
bodies the existing rubric as to banns published in the
time of Morning Prayer, and then proceeds to enact
that they may also be published in the afternoon,
where there is no Morning Service, and provides that
this afternoon’s publication shall be after the Second
Lesson. These unauthorised rubrics prescribe that
the morning publication also should be made after the

n See a statement in reference to this from A. J. Stephens’ “ Book
of Common Prayer,” vol. ii. p. 1151. See Appendix VIII.

Second Lesson, and hence has grown up the custom
of publishing them then. But these rubrics have no
legal validity : and it is my duty to point out to you
that any who, after due warning from their Ordinary,
continue the unlawful practice, may bring themselves
under the very severe penalties enacted in the case of
undue publication of banns.

As to another point, I repeat advice which I have
already given. In choral service, it is right to chant
the alternate verses of the Athanasian Creed from
the opposite sides of the church ; but where the Creed
is read, it greatly promotes devotion to let it be read
like the other Creeds, through, — by the officiating
minister and the congregation together. This is espe-
cially the case in small country parishes, where the
responses are not unfrequently made only by the clerk,
whose pronunciation of words to which he is little
accustomed, tends too often to provoke a smile rather
than to aid devotion.

In answer to many enquiries, I add that the proper
time for reading the Churching Service is immediately
before the commencement of Morning or Evening
Prayer, whilst the congregation is still gathering; it
is the thanksgiving of the delivered woman on being
raised up from the bed of suffering, and enabled to take
again her place in the congregation. The woman,
taught by the clergyman, is to repeat after him the
whole Psalm as her special act of thanksgiving ; it is
not to be said responsively by the priest and people.
It is contrary to law to interrupt the service either
before the General Thanksgiving, or at any other
place in order to interpolate this office.

The Lord’s Prayer at the commencement of the
Communion Office is to be said by the minister alone ;

the clerks and people are not to say it aloud after
him, as they are when it recurs later in the service.

I am thankful to see a large increase in the ap-
pointed observance of Saints’ days throughout the
diocese, and I strongly counsel the extension of
these services. These I should feel bound to enforce
in any parish where members of the Church requested
such an enforcement ; but there are, I trust, none in
which the known readiness of parishioners to at-
tend such services, would not lead the clergy to com-
mence them without any reference to me.

To another matter of parochial administration I
desire to call your attention. I do not think that the
improvement of our churchyards has borne any pro-
portion to that of our churches. Uncared for churches
in this diocese are, thank God, startling exceptions to
our common rule ; but neglected churchyards are
still too common. This, I think, is an irreverend and
an unwise neglect. A high sense of what the Incar-
nation of our Lord has done for man, ought to make
us careful of God’s acre, in which are laid the bodies
of His saints, which once were, and which shall
again, be temples of the Holy Ghost. This neglect,
moreover, is, as indeed is all irreverence, — unwise
also. Few secondary influences, I believe, have more
strongly attached the people to our Church than our
Burial Service and our churchyard guardianship of
the dead. The miserable Cemeteries’ Act, with its
deep degradation of perpetuating in death the sad
separation of religiously divided lives, was itself, I
think, in a considerable degree, the offspring of this
neglect. Still, in a multitude of parishes the church-
yard is yet the resting-place of the dead ; still, around
the sacred enclosure cluster those holy sympathies

which bind the living to the departed ; and still, if we
would undertake generally the task of making our
churchyards what they should be, might they be
a powerful instrument, especially in country parishes,
of keeping the affections of the people faithful to the
Church of their baptism. I confidently request in
this work of piety the assistance of the clergy and the
churchwardens.

As to one other matter, I would ask for more uni-
versal exertions. I have expressed my thankfulness
for the increase of missionary exertion within the
diocese. It has been not a little remarkable. The
full measure of it I cannot lay before you, from the
variety of missions now assisted by us. But the mere
difference in the sums contributed to our two greatest
missionary societies now and some few years back,
is some indication of the spread of missionary zeal
amongst us. Thus in 1845 the sum raised from this
diocese for the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, was only £1,419 Os. 4d., in the past year it
had risen to £4,961 19s. 8d. ; whilst for the Church
Missionary Society, in 1845, only £2,238 19s. 8d.
was raised, but the contributions of 1865 had risen to
£3,355 12s. 3d. Still, there are parishes where no-
thing is done ; and this ought not so to be. Every
parish, because it is a separate centre of the Christian
Church, with its own ministry and sacraments, ought
to have its own share in discharging the great com-
mands, “ Freely ye have received, freely give “Go
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every
creature/’ I would therefore beg the representatives
of every parish in the diocese, to see that in it there
is an organized attempt to gather every year the alms
of the faithful for the supply of the means of grace to

our emigrant brethren, and for the conversion of the
heathen world to God.

And now, I turn from our own diocese, to ques-
tions of a more general character. Amongst those
which concern us in common with our whole Church,
I esteem one of the most important the resolution 0
adopted by the whole Episcopal College to provide
for the employment of laymen whose heart God
has touched with a love of souls, in an orderly and
systematic way as readers in our parishes. I have
already been requested to license such. But accord-
ing to my custom, I have deferred acting on the re-
solution till the annual gathering of the officers of the
diocese shall enable me, as to its detail, to consult
them, and through them you. I believe that there
are many amongst our lay brethren who, when they
find that they can undertake such works under the
authority and licence of their bishop, will gladly give
some of their time and labour to aiding us in our
great work of “ seeking for Christ’s sheep that are
dispersed abroad, and for His children who are in this
naughty world, that they may be saved through
Christ for ever.”

The grave question of the reconstitution of the
Court of Final Appeal in matters of doctrine, remains
unsettled. It is one, the issues of which are so im-
portant that, provided only it is not let to fall asleep,
I would rather see it wait the gradual clearing away
of difficulties, than risk the dangers of a too hasty
settlement. I will not now do more than urge you to
study two important papers upon this question read
by the Chancellor of our diocese before the Congresses
of Norwich and York : papers full, as are all he
0 See Appendix IX.

writes, of knowledge of his subject and of loyalty
to the Church of Christ. Time and discussion can
hardly fail to clear away some of the great difficulties
in the public mind which now stand in the way of
legislation.

Perhaps the most mischievous of these are the
often-repeated fallacies : first, that because our Church
is a national Church, the nation is entitled to settle its
doctrine ; and secondly, that those who seek for an
improvement in our Courts do so that its doctrine
may in future be settled by the clergy and not by
the nation.

It may be worth while to examine for a few mo-
ments each of these common assertions.

To see how unfounded is the first, we have only to
understand what it is a Christian nation does when it
establishes the Church within its borders. What it
really does, is this : it makes terms with an inde-
pendent power ; it gives much and it receives much,
by fair, and, as we believe, by righteous compact. It
gives, as distinct from the purely spiritual powers of
the Apostolate, the right to exercise ecclesiastical ju-
risdiction, the power, that is, of holding Courts, of
administering oaths, and of enforcing coercive disci-
pline. Besides this, it gives what proportion it will of
worldly rank, wealth, and precedence to the officers of
the spiritual body. All this the people of England have
given largely to their Church, and all this, which they
have given, they can take away or modify. But they
receive as well as give. They receive the doctrine,
the means of grace, the exercise of the spiritual gifts
of the body they endow ; and they do this on the
conviction that she is the true body, has the right
faith, and can confer the real gifts.

The compact is, not that she shall be the State’s
instrument for teaching what the State shall from
time to time approve, but the teacher for the State
of that which she has already convinced the State is
— “ the Truth.” Any body which undertook to teach,
not the faith revealed to us by the Lord, but the
teaching which the State should at any time desire
to receive, might well furnish prophets of the groves
to sit at Jezebel’s table, but could put forth no pre-
tension to be the Church of Christ. Such a body
could not stand for a day against infidelity on the one
hand, or Popery on the other.

What is to be taught, having then, once for all,
been settled, neither party can, without the assent
of the other, justly vary the terms of this contract.
The State cannot require the Church at its will to
alter one particle of the old truth. The Church can-
not teach a different doctrine from that which she at
first propounded, and which the State acknowledged
as true. If new forms of error should ever make new
definitions of the faith needful, not to change, but to
secure the continued sameness of the Church’s teach-
ing, both parties to the contract must agree to such
an alteration before they can justly be enforced. The
Church must prepare them in her Convocations, and
the State assent to them in her Parliaments. In no
sense, then, can it be truly said that the nation settles
the doctrine of the Church because it is the national
Church.

As to the second assertion, we must note first that
the office of the Courts of Law is altogether diverse
from that of the Legislature. They have to settle
what the law is, not what it ought to be.

If then, the question arises whether one of the

ministers of the Church should be removed for wrong
teaching, the State has a right because he is a teacher
in the State Church to be satisfied that his removal
is just ; but the State has no right to demand that he
shall be removed because it dislikes his teaching ; or
be spared, because his teaching is what it approves.
Its approval is not the matter in question ; the only-
question is, Has he taught against that old truth which
the Church covenanted to declare and the State cove-
nanted to receive ? This, the State is bound to see
honestly asked and truly answered. The State does
not, in any sense, after its first agreement with the
teaching body, settle the doctrine of the State Church,
neither does the ecclesiastical body settle it. It is
settled for both ; both are bound by their contract.
The only questions are, — for the State, What upon
this point is the teaching, from the beginning, of that
body with which we have made a compact ? — of the
Ecclesia, Is this the teaching I engaged to give?
What the Church has a right to ask, and what the
State is surely bound to grant, is, that the Courts
which decide such matters should be so constituted
as shall best secure a right answer being given to
the question, — Is the teaching which is assailed the
teaching we contracted the one to give, the other
to receive ? If the decisions of the courts of law,
instead of settling this question, proceed by intro-
ducing new, or unsettling old definitions of the faith,
to change the character of the teaching which is
to be given and received, they would, in fact, with
none of the qualifications for legislating, be assuming
the office of the legislature. The distress which some
recent decisions have caused to faithful members of
the Church, is to be traced to the apprehension that

by a neglect of these principles the State was by little
and little altering the received sense, and so perhaps
preparing the way ultimately to alter the very letter
of the old standards of doctrine, for the maintenance
of which the Church is founded, and to the recognition
of which the State is pledged.

The Conscience Clause question continues still un-
settled, and unhappily the Committee of the House
of Commons appointed to enquire into it, separated
without agreeing to a Report. My own judgment
on the matter remains unaltered. Whilst I advise
all of you to receive into your schools the children
of Dissenters, for whatever part of the teaching in
the school the parents are willing to send them, —
in the hope that God may bless to them that por-
tion of the Church’s teaching which their natural
guardians will allow them to receive, — I cannot but
esteem the enforcement of what is called the “ con-
science clause” as absolutely at variance with the sys-
tem deliberately adopted by Parliament of supporting
denominational education, and full of danger to the
present efficiency and future character of our schools.
The published correspondence on this matter between
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the late Lord Pre-
sident of the Council, proves, I think, to every fair-
minded man, 1st, that the conductors of Church
schools which have admitted the conscience clause,
are considered by those who impose it to be under an
honourable engagement to teach the children of Dis-
senters none of the religious doctrines of the Church
to which their parents object, — that right of object-
ing, reaching up to the Apostles’ Creed ; and 2ndly,
as the necessary consequence of this, that the con-
science clause, as it is now worded and enforced, is
simply a provision for compelling the clergy of the

Established Church to give a secular education to the
children of Dissenters. This, I believe, Parliament
never intended, and, when the question is stripped
of its ambiguities, will never enforce.

Further, I regard the admission of the conscience
clause into the trust deeds of schools as endanger-
ing their power of maintaining, in time to come, be-
fore courts of law, their right to be considered dis-
tinctively Church of England Schools. It is possible
that some variation of the terms proposed to he in-
serted in the trust deeds, accompanied by a parlia-
mentary enactment declaring the full Church cha-
racter of schools which adopt it, — may remove these
difficulties. Failing this, perhaps the only safe solu-
tion which can now be given to this vexed ques-
tion is, the dropping Building Grants altogether.
The remarkable diminution in the number of such
grants received by Church schools since the enforce-
ment of the conscience clause, shews that the Church
would lose little by the adoption of such a course.

Two other most important matters seem to demand
our notice ; I mean, the development of ritual in the
public worship of some of our churches ; and the
proposed attempts for restoring the unity of Chris-
tendom.

I class these two movements together because I
think both spring from the same source ; and because
I believe that we cannot duly measure the good and the
evil which are working in them, unless we see from
what they originate, and what are the great influences by
which they have been modified. The retrospect must
be to a time somewhat distant, but the importance of
the object must excuse my asking you, for a few
moments, to revert with me to it.

The history of human thought is little else than

a chronicle of re-actions ; and the true links which
bind successive schools may most often be found in
their antagonisms. Thus the rise of the great evan-
gelical movement in this land, to which not this
nation only, but every quarter of the world owes so
much, — was itself, through the working of the Spirit
of God, a re-action against the sluggish apathy of the
last century as to Christian doctrine and the spiritual
life. It was stirred into fuller action by the infidel re-
volution of France, amidst the sparks which were blown
amongst ourselves from that vast conflagration. This
movement, by degrees, changed the whole temper of
our Church. Being, — and needing to be to do its
work, — essentially a protest against old formality in
the dry use of common means of grace, its great
labour was to stir up the spiritual life in individuals.
It proclaimed the uselessness of creeds and formularies,
and services and sacraments, to those whose souls
were not awakened by the living breath of the Lord.
Dwelling thus mainly on the subjective side of Chris-
tianity, to a certain extent it tended to prevent the
putting prominently forward those great objective
truths and institutions which provide for the per-
manence of the Church ; and, as it died away in
a generation, many of whom inherited more of its
watchwords than of its spirit, — it left the Church
with a vast increase of individual piety, with a general
standard of religious feeling raised by the spasms of
true life through which it had led so many, — but with
some estrangedness amongst some of its most exclu-
sive adherents from the great external provisions
which God has set in the new covenant for per-
petually re-implanting, and so maintaining, the Divine
life in the world.

Meanwhile, a new eddy in the great world-stream
was making these very provisions pre-eminently im-
portant as safeguards of the faith. The rising temper
of the day was one marked by an impatience of all
authority, human and divine, which was running rapidly
into utter lawlessness. Every opinion, every institu-
tion, almost every fact, in politics, in history, in
morals, and in religion, — was attacked. Upon the
established Church, as was natural, because it stood
directly in the course of the revolving cyclone, the
storm burst in all its fury. The men of the former
school, who clung pertinaciously to their own shib-
boleth, were in some respects singularly disqualified
from making head against it. Many of them, in
their hearty zeal for individual piety, had come to
see in their Church little more than the most
national, the best educated, best endowed, and most
sober-minded of the sects around them. The sub-
jective and individual had swallowed up the ob-
jective and the corporate, just when the whole
strain of the struggle must rest upon the Divine
fact of there being a revealed external truth, and
a Divine present machinery upon which the indi-
vidual and inward could rest.

But this was not the case with all. There woke
up in many hearts, which had been directly and
indirectly affected by the last movement, a new modi-
fication of the old re-action. Loyal spirits were driven
back to contemplate the true essentials of the Chris-
tian Church, as the divinely constituted keeper of
God’s word, and God’s truth, as through the teaching
of that word, the unchanging authority in a world of
perturbations, as the divinely constituted channel of
His grace to man. To maintain and spread these

truths, to prove that our Church was for our land,
this one Apostolical communion, — and to shew her
forth in this character, — was the vocation of the new
school. It took into its ranks, as all new and strong
movements will, most heterogeneous supporters. But
many of its leaders were the very men who, in the
former generation, would have been the standard-
bearers in the evangelical column. Inheriting their
love to souls, their zeal for truth, their simple-hearted
devotion to Christ, they were ready to bear every
suffering and reproach, so that they in their day could
but fight, as their fathers had fought in the genera-
tion before them, the good fight to which the voice
had called them.

How mighty for good, even with all its drawbacks,
has been the result of this movement, even they can
form some idea who measure it by the mere outward
standard of the spiritual power of the Church of Eng-
land, as it was then, and as it is now. And yet this
outward power is but the consequence of that growth
in devotion, in self-sacrifice, in zeal for the faith, in
belief in God’s presence with her, which lie deep
down below the outer surface.

But such a movement must have its own dangers.
As it attracted the attention of eager, and drew the
affections of passionate men, in whom was no great
depth of faith, to the glorious vision of the Church of
Christ, some would rest in it, and so become the victims
of mere exterior sensations ; whilst others would crave,
amidst the unsettledness and questions of the day,
for the assertion of infallibility and the utterances of
absolute authority.

Beside such fantastic and undisciplined spirits, in
their hour of weakness, ever stood our Church’s oldest

and deadliest enemy, the schismatic papal communion ;
offering them all that their mother in her wisdom
withheld, promising them what she in her very love
denied. And when troublous times came, when it
seemed as if some great doctrine of the faith were not
duly asserted amongst us, she succeeded, even with
some nobler natures and more loyal hearts, in drawing
them away, to drink of the cup of her sorceries, and
exchange their true old English Churchmanship for
the distempered foreign growth of an intriguing Ultra-
montanism. This was most especially the case with
some whose earliest training had been in the Evan-
gelical movement, and upon whom the vision of the
Church in her completeness burst as a new discovery
with an almost dazzling brightness. Yet still, in spite
of such losses, and of the foul reproach and deep
suspicion to which they exposed it, the movement
flowed on unchecked, blessing often the most those
who did not, as party men, belong to it, until at this
day, restored churches, re-established ritual, more
frequent and devout communions, works of faith, and
love, and mercy, and a devotion to the truth and to
the fellowship of the saints, and stirrings of life in
Synods, Convocations, and Missions, such as our
fathers knew not, attest, — we humbly trust, — the
presence with us of the good hand of our God.

Now, it is at this time and amidst such blessings,
that there has risen amongst us (to deal first with
that subject) this great development of Ritual. Doubt-
less it has sprung out of the two movements I have
sought to describe. It seems to me like some brilliant
fantastic coruscation, which has cast itself forth from
the surface of the weltering mass of molten metal,
which, unaffected by such exhalations, flows on with
its full stream into its appointed mould. Those

burning sparks witness of the heat of the mass from
which they sprung ; they are not, in their peculiar
action, of its essence or its end. For it is carefully to
be noted, that, where the movement itself has been the
deepest, there ritualistic extravagances have the least
appeared. No diocese, perhaps, from various causes,
has risen more than that of Oxford, with the general
rise of Church devotion ; none has been more free
from these peculiar excesses. And this suggests some
important considerations as to our conduct with re-
gard to these newly restored rites, and as to those
who have sought to introduce them.

How then, first, are the introducers of these rites
to be treated by us? Not, I venture to say, at once,
with harshness and reproach, not with unloving se-
verity, not with undistinguishing condemnation, not
with un brotherly suspicions. These are not the wea-
pons of Christian men ; by these, Christ’s truth cannot
be advanced. We are bound to admit, that amongst
the clergy and the laity (for this has been anything
but an exclusively clerical movement) who are con-
spicuous for the introduction of these novelties, are
men inferior to none in self-devotion, in apparent love
to Christ, in tenderness towards His poor, in zeal for
His truth, or in the fervour of their own devotion.
Such men we can ill afford to lose. I trust that no
taunts from without, and no timorousness within, will
lead any of the rulers of our Church to aid in driving
out any one who can, consistently with truth and
faithfulness, be kept amongst us, lest we repeat again
our fathers’ fault, and lose our brethren as they lost
John Wesley and his noble fellows p.

p For some almost prophetic words from a predecessor in this
See, see Appendix X.

D 2

But, with this kindly forbearance, which strives
to retain the men, there must be joined distinct
utterances as to the truth committed to our charge.
We do, my brethren in Christ, — I doubt not one and
all, — hold fast to the great protest against mediaeval
corruption made by our fathers three hundred years
ago. Certainly in our day we have seen nothing to
induce us to let it die out in uncertain or ambiguous
murmurs. We have seen the full bloom of corruptions
which were then but budding ; doubtful expressions of
earlier times concerning the Blessed Virgin have been
first exaggerated (“ developed’’ is the Romish euphem-
ism for the characteristic operation), then fixed in
formal statements, and at last enforced as dogmatic
truth. The growing cultus of the mother of our Lord,
long bordering on the highest act of impiety against the
only God, that of transferred worship, — seems to have
reached its highest conceivable limit. Never did
the English mind revolt more thoroughly than now
against that whole system which hangs like a lurid
atmosphere around ultramontane belief ; poisoning,
as it seems to us, the blessed sanctities of family life,
and breaking into strange distortions the straight
lines of unswerving truth.

No tenderness then towards men, can make us
trifle with the protest of our Church against the
Roman alterations of the primitive and apostolic
truth. Should it at last unhappily be plain that
any do indeed intend, through practices in appear-
ance at least somewhat assimilated to those of Rome,
to introduce the Roman teaching, — one course, and
one course only as to them, would then remain. May
God avert that evil day, and teach us in the mean-
time how to draw closer to ourselves those whom,

for our very love of Him they love, — we cannot
choose but love.

Most reluctantly should I admit any general charge
of disloyalty to our own Church as the moving spring
of this ritual development. In some few of its abet-
tors such disloyalty may lurk, — I trust in very few.
I cannot doubt the hearty honesty of the great num-
ber of those whose actions I am, nevertheless, com-
pelled to condemn. I desire to believe that they have
intended only to protest in act against the care-
less negligence which has shocked them in some of
their brethren, and against the lowering down, through
modern unbelief, of some of the great doctrines of
our reformed communion ; that they have desired
to raise the English not to introduce the Romish
use.

But, leaving the men, the question remains as to
these new rites. We in this diocese have read of
them without ; but our churches, as to these, remain
as they were. To such a course I have earnestly
exhorted you both publicly and privately, and to-day,
in the face of the Diocese, I repeat the counsel. Nor
will I scruple to assign my reasons for praying you
still to maintain this cautious abstinence from such
changes as these.

First then, let me say I do not rest this advice
upon any authoritative decision of mine as to the
illegality of any or all of these innovations.

There are two reasons why I avoid altogether this
ground of advice.

1. Because I may at any moment be required, as
an ecclesiastical judge, to decide upon this question,
having heard it argued before me ; and it seems con-
trary to the duty of my office to pronounce as if I

had prejudged what I afterwards must hear with
impartial care.

2. Because I thiuk the mere legal settlement of
such a question cannot meet the vast issues which
are involved in it. I should have far more hope of
healing our troubles by taking a broader view of the
matter than merely ascertaining the exact limits,
intended or unintended, of a statute passed some
hundred years ago.

I would then, ask all who long for these altera-
tions, whom my voice can reach, — to consider for a few
moments what are the purposes and what therefore,
at any time, ought to be the limits of ritual. All
religious ritual then, which is not used in conformity
with the direct command of God, must of course be
adopted for the end of assisting His people to set forth
His glory. There can therefore, be no absolutely fixed
standard to which all public Christian worship should
rigidly conform. It must, to a certain extent, vary ac-
cording to the knowledge, the customs, and the temper
of the country and age in which it is practised. This I
notice first, because the necessity of such power of
variation may, I think, lead us on to see what are the
great fundamental rules on which the whole scheme
of ritual ought to be framed. For to fulfil its pur-
pose, it must lead the worshipper to God, not interpose
itself as a veil between God and him ; it must express,
whilst it may elevate his devotion. Whatever fails
in this, fails of effecting its true purpose. For if it
does not express the inward worship of the heart, it
must be either an hypocrisy or an oppression, and in
either case it must mar and not raise devotion. It
may thus fail if, by extravagance, or by its mere
unaccustomedness, it rudely shocks the religious in-

stincts of the worshipper. It may thus fail if by its
splendour, its variety, or its intricacy, it draws the*
soul, which should be lifted up to God, down to the
painted images which float as upon an intervening
mist upon its own presence and action.

If these principles are sound, it follows — first, that
whilst ritual may rise with, and in its turn help to
raise increasing devotion, such a rise must be most
gradual, that it may be free from the starts and shocks
which must accompany the sudden acting of external
force on any living body, and be able to adapt itself
freely to the unseen growth of the inward and spi-
ritual devotion of the souls whose outward worship
it is to embody and express ; next, that all sudden
changes of the externals of worship, which in viola-
tion of this harmony run greatly beyond the inner
life of the worshipper’s devotion, are like to in-
jure the character of his worship : and thirdly, that,
irrespective of any such shocks, a greatly raised
ritual need not necessarily be in itself a blessing ;
for that it may be approaching the condition in
which the intricate and artificial character of its
symbolism, or even its very beauty and gorgeous-
ness, unfit it for being a transmitting medium of
the soul’s worship.

As to the application of the two first of these limita-
tions, whilst we must always guard against weakly
yielding to the love of pre-eminence which still leads
many a parish Diotrephes to seek to dictate rudely
to those who are set over him in the Lord ; jet there
ought to be a loving, tender watchfulness on the part
of those, whether clergy or laity, who desire any
change, lest what they deem an improvement should
become a stumblingblock to another. Still more care

is needful as to the third limitation. For as we have,
In all the details of worship, no divinely-appointed
ceremonial, we must watch jealously in all changes
whether or no we have with us indications of the lead-
ing hand of God, and at once suspect as earthly
additions, whatever seems to lack such discoverable
tokens of the Divine approval. And now, when I
proceed to try by these principles the extreme ritual-
ism of which I speak, I have no hesitation in avowing
that it does not appear to me to make good its claim
to our adoption. Its growth has certainly been hasty
and apparently excessive. For, first, the sudden resto-
ration of unaccustomed vestments, — always trying to
eyes used only to a simple and colourless attire, — has
been accompanied by an obtrusive introduction of new,
perhaps suspected, attitudes, postures, and actions, as
well as by interruptions of the wonted service which,
through addresses to the senses of sight, sound, and
smell, — challenged to themselves notice and criticism.
In all this, then, there has been no advance by
insensible gradation, but rather a studied display of
large and rapid change. Next, there has been no
general preparation of men’s minds for such altera-
tions. All, I suppose, would admit that in most, if
not all, of our old parish churches, the introduction
of these new rites would be startling and disturb-
ing,— we may even say offensive, — not only to a few
jealous, ignorant, and narrow-minded persons, but to
the great mass of our sober-minded and devout wor-
shippers. Thus, instead of finding the ground pre-
pared for them, they would necessarily repel those
(and they would be the many) to whom they would
be offensive, and may we not further fear that they
would too often tend to draw down from the great

Object, to the mere vehicle of worship, too many of
those to whom they were welcome ?

Further; are there about the introduction of these
rites those marks of God’s leading which should precede,
or at least accompany, such changes ? I cannot trace
them. Rather I see counter-indications. For, the work-
ing of the unseen Spirit which fashions and moulds the
external aspect of the Church, must surely be traced by
most orderly developments, or God were not the God
of Order. So I think it has been in that marked rise
in the tone of our services which has distinguished
the last thirty years. The choral worship which sur-
vived, under the shelter of authority, in our cathedrals,
has spread to one after another of our parish churches,
as the parishioners became fitted for the change.

* Whole districts have been leavened gradually with
a higher idea and practice of worship. With that
has come a greater outward exhibition, and, I verily
believe, a quickened inward spirit of reverence to-
wards holy things, and in religious services. Faith
in God’s presence and gifts has grown equally with
the external manifestations which belong to and affirm
them, until some, at least, of those without have been
constrained to fall down and confess that God is with
us of a truth. But can we with any like confidence
claim His working in these later changes? We have
seen already their lack of that character of gradual-
ness which is a correlative of growth. Are they not
wanting in other almost equally sure indications of
the presence of His hand who is the author and the
restorer of all good ? Have they the marks of being,
like all stirrings of the life-giving Spirit in nature
and in grace, common and diffusive ? Again, Have
they with them, I will not say the encouragement,

but even the clear allowance of living authority, whe-
ther in office or in the weight which gathers in any
church round wisdom, learning, and holiness ? Is it
not, on the contrary, a matter of notoriety, that they
have been eminently sectional, if not individual in their
rise ; and that they have been mainly introduced, some-
times clearly by the rash, and generally by the young
and the ardent, against the wishes of the more sober-
minded, and the advice of those whom He has ap-
pointed overseers of the flock ?

Is there not here again, a marked diversity be-
tween the introduction of these new changes, and
the advance of that earlier and broader column of
which it is apt to deem itself the head. Opposition
indeed there was to the earlier movement ; but until
the publication of the celebrated Ctf Tract 90,” nothing
like the general condemnation of the Episcopal body ;
nor was there, as now, the voice of the Church’s synod
uttering, as now, its cautious but distinct words of
censure on the character and amount of what had
been attempted.

If I am so far right in my principles and my con-
clusions, I may venture, without any fear of seeming
faint-hearted, to go one step further, and suggest to
those who favour these changes the great dangers
which wait on such a course. These seem to me
manifold. There is no small peril that it must ere
long raise before Courts of Law questions both of
religious worship, and even of doctrine, touching
those sacred and mysterious subjects which are never
brought into such precincts without fearful injury to
the reverence, tenderness of spirit, and devout love
of many ; nor without absolute shocks to the faith
and stedfastness of others. I may go further still and

say, that, in the present condition of our Courts, such
a reference to them might easily involve us in the
peril of provoking, as to some of the most mysterious
articles of the faith,— authoritative statements which
would create a wide-spread schism. This first ; and
then, beyond this again, there is the danger of provok-
ing what is too likely to prove the injurious because, if
for no other reason, the premature legislation of Con-
vocation and Parliament on these high matters. And
again, there is the danger too of waking up the half-
slumbering spirit of religious suspicion and narrow
intolerance, which needs but to be awaked to do, as
in the times of our fathers, deeds of ignorance and
brutal violence which might make us hide our faces
before Christendom in shame. Here surely, are
dangers enough to make us cautious ; and all the
more so, because in these dangers is involved the
great risk of staying, if not of driving back, that
gradual advance of reverence for holy things, and
that modest and yet prolific increase of sober ritual,
and withal of deepened devotion in worship, which the
present generation has seen moving onward with such
a blessed presence.

Two other dangers let me suggest, lying in a deeper
sphere than those I yet have named.

As it is through the spiritual organization of
their own Church that her ministers and members
come into actual contact with that whole body of
Christ in which the Spirit dwells, and which is
moulded by that Divine presence, — is there not a dan-
ger, lest in resisting authority, even to promote, as
they think, the efficiency of our services, — men may
be found to have been putting rashly forth an un-
commanded hand to stay the ark of the jealous God ?

With the suggestion of one remaining danger, I will
quit this part of the subject. There are, I believe,
those who have favoured these changes because they
appeared to them to introduce not Roman customs
but those of England before the Reformation ; — such
as those embodied in the Sarum Missal or the Provincial
Constitutions collected by Lyndwood, or his glosses
thereon. This is true in fact, but it seems to me
to go but a little way towards removing the just
objections entertained to this revival by those who
value purity of doctrine above all things. For these
were not the rites of the earlier, but of the later
centuries. There can be no question that, though
our English rite preserved even at that time, like
the Ambrosian at Milan, its own distinctive charac-
ter,— yet that as we were then deeply imbued with
the corruptions of the West, these errors would in
some degree be represented in our peculiar services.
Earnestly, in God’s name, would I implore all who
value His truth to weigh well the danger they incur
by familiarising the young and the unwary even with
such mitigated forms of error. For one, I tremble at
our Master’s words, “ Whosoever shall break one of
these least commandments, and shall teach men so,
he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven q.”
For these reasons then, amongst many others, I deeply
lament these extreme changes which have been here
and there introduced amongst us. I lament if possible
still more the lack of temperate discretion, and the
manifest unwillingness to obey, which has in many
instances marked the mode in which the changes
have been made. Most of all I deplore what seems
to me the unquestionable fact that in some in-
q St. Matt. v. 19.

stances there has been a studied introduction of
names and usages which seem to have nothing else
to commend them than their distinctively Roman
character. Words would fail me in condemning such
conduct, if it implied in Church of England clergy-
men a secret attachment to that schism atical and cor-
rupt body. But if it be free from this greater sin,
how grievous is the fault of at once seeking to intro-
duce novelties into God’s service, and at the same
time needlessly attaching to them that most certain
of scandals, to all true and loyal-hearted English
Churchmen, — a popish appearance ! Most justly does
the Committee of the Lower House of the Convoca-
tion of our Province “ remonstrate against the adop-
tion of a phraseology borrowed from foreign commu-
nions, and which is, in some instances, as applied to
the ministrations of the Church of England, novel
and offensive r.” Surely our Master’s tenderness with
the weak, and His love for souls, has been too much
forgotten in such displays as these.

But you may ask, What are the practical steps
which the crisis requires? The indiscretion of our
brethren has made any answer to this question diffi-
cult, and I propose one with unfeigned misgiving.
But thus much appears clear to me.

I. That the remedy cannot be found in legisla-
tion : first, of course, through our Convocations and
ultimately by Parliament. Such legislation would be
eminently premature, and therefore dangerous. To
be safe, it should embody and ratify, but not precede
the Church’s general conclusions. To take but one in-
stance. Legislation, if attempted, must of course deal

r Report of the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury
on Ritual.

at once with the Rubric, which is quoted as legalizing
these restored ornaments. What could it do? If it
simply repealed the enactment, it would, by the mere
act of such repeal, stir many sleeping embers into
a wide-spread blaze. For this is the enactment which
connects the whole ceremonial of our Church with
the ceremonial of Christian antiquity. It is the coun-
terpart in outward rites of the claim which we put so
fearlessly forward in doctrine that we hold implicitly
all which was held from the beginning by the un-
divided Church. Circumstances may have suspended
the common employment of these outward tokens of
our unity with the past, but we claim them as ours
should occasion require us to use our inheritance.
How many amongst us who would greatly prefer al-
lowing our existing customs to rule undisturbed in act,
would protest earnestly against breaking any links
which yet join us to the pre-papal Catholic Christen-
dom? Looking at the constitution of many minds, it is
really impossible to say how far this might not reach.

But, besides these considerations ; if this rubric
were simply repealed, no rule for our ritual would
remain. Are then the times propitious for Convoca-
tion and Parliament proceeding further, and enact-
ing by canon and statute a new table of rules for all
the ornaments and ceremonial of our Church ? Every
one of us, I believe, would deprecate a step so certain
to be richly productive of evil in its discussion, so
likely to promote in the end variance and schism,
which might utterly rend our body and paralyse its
usefulness. Any legislation, be it remembered, must be
in the direction of restricting the large liberty now en-
joyed by men of all shades of opinion in the Church,
from the mere fact of the various present sources of

rule. For statutes, canons, prescriptions, and usage all
now tend to modify and to enlarge our licence. A new
sharply- defined statutable rule would indeed make
havoc of the Church’s liberty on every side.

The same objection applies to seeking in judicial
sentences new and authoritative interpretations of
rules, the many-sided application of which has often
enabled our Church to expand or contract her cere-
monial with the elasticity which a great national
communion so eminently requires. Here, again,
I think we may find words of wisdom in the Re-
port of the Committee of the Lower House, when
they give their opinion that “ judicial proceedings
would tend to promote rather than to allay dissen-
sions,’’ and that “ to attempt to establish a rule ap-
plicable to all places and congregations alike, is to
establish a uniformity which cannot be obtained ex-
cept at the price of peace5.”

Add to this, the certainty of another and perhaps
a greater danger. However we might strive to limit
the question to rites, we could not, in the discus-
sion, avoid dealing with the doctrines of which rites
are the shadows ; so that we should incur the peril
of requiring such tribunals as ours are, to interpret
with authority definitions of the greatest mysteries
of our holy faith, which we have inherited from an
undivided Christendom, of the history of which, and
of the value of the theological terms in which they
are expressed, the Judges of such courts are likely
to be absolutely ignorant.

Legal proceedings then, as well as legislative mea-
sures, may, I trust, be avoided : and yet I fear both

3 Report of Committee of Lower House of Convocation on Ritual,

p. 11,

will be inevitable unless those who, by rashness, to say
the least, of action, have brought themselves and us
into these difficulties, will make, under the fatherly
counsel of those set over them in the Lord, some
sacrifice for peace. My earnest counsel to them is,
that, in every instance, they lay their whole case before
their Bishop, and act absolutely on his direction. He
will, no doubt, consider well and lovingly the special
circumstances of each church ; the difficulty of sud-
denly abandoning all to which a congregation has be-
come attached, and, so far as he deems he lawfully can,
will seek to meet such difficulties by a just and com-
prehensive settlement of the questions referred trust-
fully to him. In urging this course upon faithful
Churchmen, I speak with the more confidence because
it is assuredly the true Church line. Until the passing
of the Act of Uniformity there is no question that the
Bishop to a large degree fixed the Liturgy of his Dio-
cese ; those, then, who contend, on the strength of
a dormant Rubric, for a legal right to innovate on the
use of the Diocese against the judgment of the Bishop,
are, in truth, seeking to supersede the Church’s rule
by an Act of Parliament. Peace, I believe, is still
obtainable if, as I venture to advise, they will place
the matter in their Bishop’s hands. For, that which
has most alarmed the great body of the Church, is
a sense of entire insecurity as to what amount of
alteration, and what hidden doctrinal meanings, re-
cent changes seem to threaten.

It may be objected to this that it would still leave
some difference of ceremonial in different churches. To
a certain extent it would. But I do not regard such
a variation, if it be moderate, allowed by authority,
and such as implies no discordance of principle, as in

itself an evil. So far from it, with a general uni-
formity some differences in detail ought, I conceive,
to be allowed. On this principle, I have now for
twenty-one years administered this Diocese : never
even urging upon those who from habit disliked it
themselves, or feared the misunderstanding of their
flocks, (and not in such cases urging it now,) obedience
to such plain requirements as that the Sunday morn-
ing sermon, wThen a part of the Communion Office,
should be preached in the surplice and not in the
gown. And, in leaving such matters open, I have
feared no injurious breach of uniformity. What is
most suitable in one church may be very unsuitable
in another. Choral service, a sober splendour in
ceremonial, all that our Church allows of symbolism,
may be useful in one place and most harmful in an-
other ; and, for the most part, the just application of so
flexible a rule as this of course implies, may, I be-
lieve, be trusted to the discretion of the clergy and
their congregations throughout our different parishes,
under their Bishop’s rule, if only we are prepared at
once to remind the turbulent and disaffected that the
due ordering of the services rests, within the limits
fixed by the law, with the Ordinary, and not with
them, and at the same time to consult, with a tender
anxiety, ever for the infirmities of the really devout.
So far, indeed, do I carry this principle, that where
new churches have been built with a view to the prac-
tice in them of a legal ritual higher than the common,
and where congregations have been gathered to it and
learned to value it, — I should greatly regret any sudden
and violent changes (except as to matters absolutely
necessary) being forced upon them in the direction of
a lower ceremonial in order to maintain a frozen uni-

fortuity. Within certain limits, andthose somewhat wide
ones, I should wish to see the Church of this free coun-
try left free to gather in the people to herself. If into
churches in which there are no worshippers of longer
standing, who, being used to another mode of conducting
the service, would be rudely shocked by some increase
of ceremonial, any of those multitudes who are now
without, can, by any increase of the externals of wor-
ship which does not violate the law, or tend evidently
to superstition, be drawn in to hear God’s Word, and
to worship Him, — I for one should unfeignedly rejoice.
Nor, whilst I think it our absolute duty to regard ten-
derly and lovingly the very prejudices which in our own
people have entwined themselves with their devotions,
can I understand why those who have preserved for
themselves the simpler modes of worship to which they
are accustomed, should grudge to others the more
florid use to which their hearts incline, provided only
that the differences involve no variety of principle or
infringe upon the harmony of a common faith. By
such conscientious self-restraint, alike in adopting
changes ourselves, and in interfering with and judg-
ing others, I think we may best promote that growth
in faith, in devotion, and in the accidents of worship,
which has marked the present century, through the
influence first of the Evangelical, and then of what
I should term the Church movement, and which, I
trust, through God’s mercy, may yet advance soberly
and healthily amongst us.

For surely there is much left to be attained. How
far, for instance, are we below the standard set by
our Reformers as to our celebration of the Holy Eu-
charist. They, as I have alteady remarked, to guard
against the abuse of solitary masses, provided that the

celebration of the great crowning act of public wor-
ship,— which they clearly contemplated as the rule
for Sundays and holydays, — should be arrested at
a certain point of the service, unless four, or at least
three, should be ready to communicate with the Priest ;
and we, alas, have adopted, as the normal condition of
our services, what they prescribed, — under exceptional
circumstances, — to prevent one special abuse ; and, ex-
cept on one Sunday in the month, too commonly in-
terrupt our celebration as a matter of course, however
many may be present who would communicate.

Surely the natural consequences of such a decline
may be traced amongst us in our infrequent celebra-
tions, in the comparative paucity of our regular com-
municants, and in the wide prevalence of lowT and
unworthy notions concerning the blessed mystery of
the Lord’s Supper.

It is not then, — and I trust that this may add weight
to my words of caution, — from a blind contentment
with our present standard as absolutely perfect, — that
I have advised you to abstain from adopting the re-
cently exhibited extreme development of ritual. Nay,
it is not even because I would imperatively stay all
ritual progress, so only that it conforms to these four
conditions : — First, that it is not contrary to law ;
2ndly, that it does not tend to promote amongst us
any false doctrine or corrupt practice ; 3rdly, that it
be at the least not condemned by living authority ;
and 4tlily, that it be the gradual expression in outer
things of the advancement of the Church’s inward
life. Such a moderate and sober development of its
ceremonial seems to me to belong necessarily to the
Church as a living body: nor, if it be at all in its
normal condition, can its ritual be healthily congealed

e 2

into absolutely unalterable forms. Life implies, of
necessity, change. As the sap rises abundantly or is
impeded in its flow, the outer aspect of the living
bough bears witness to the alternations of the hidden
current. As the currents of the blood or the vibra-
tions of the nervous energy, are healthy or diseased,
the countenance, and even the very form of the limbs,
will visibly alter. Death only secures immutability.
No less certainly must the outward expression of the
Life Spiritual change with the changes of its inner
currents.

Again, in any normal condition of the Church, the
spiritual necessities of the body necessitate changes.
Every varying phase through which it is passing
renders some change expedient, perhaps essential to
life. The bark-bound tree, the hide-bound animal,
must suffer, and too often die. The rigid clasp of
an unalterable ritual may fatally repress zeal, gene-
rate formality, or nourish superstition. In the normal
condition therefore, of the Church, ritual must be,
and ought to be, elastic, and subject to variations. But
it may be thought that with us such changes are made
impossible by the legal character of our rubrics and
services. Impossible of course such changes are not,
even when they mount up to alterations of the letter
of our rubrics ; since they may be, and have been,
effected by Convocation and Parliament. Difficult
they no doubt are, and, from various causes, which will
occur to most of you, often dangerous ; and therefore
not to be attempted save in the last extremity of some
pressing danger ; or, better still, when they are autho-
ritatively registered by the legislatures of the Church
and of the State as the conclusions which have been
generally adopted after patient waiting and wide dis-

cussion. Bat it is of the essence of living bodies that
they provide spontaneously and without external or
foreign aid for the multitude of lesser contingencies
by which they are beset. The bough which is growing
over-weighty to maintain in the blast its connection
with the parent stem, secretes the knotty fibre which
sheathes anew the threatened junction. Animal life
abounds in such self-developed compensations, and the
spiritual life is not less self-sustained or exuberant in
resource. How often, alas ! in our own and in every
other Church has the ebbing tide of the spiritual life*
by its mere listlessness, reduced to its own new level
its nominally unaltered ritual? How often, thank
God, has revived love and renewed earnestness in de-
votion filled the old limbs with a flood of life which
has transfigured forms which it retained ? And it is
the special duty of the Church’s living governors to
understand such symptoms, and to minister to their
relief whatever powers of relaxation or control have
been left to them, without incurring the hazard or wait-
ing for the tedious issues of actual legislation. Many
such powers our own Church has lodged in its living
governors. It is their charge to interpret ambiguous
rubrics, to reduce to unity matters diversely taken, to
acquiesce in or to disallow changes which by minute
accretions the living body has silently developed.
Great, no doubt, is the judgment, the courage, the
knowledge, and, above all perhaps, the impartiality
which is needful to enable them to discharge aright
these delicate and often momentous duties. But they
cannot leave these duties undone without grievous
danger to the polity over which they are appointed
overseers ; and, however difficult be the task, there is
a strength for its discharge which they who seek it faith-

fully will find. Such difficulties are the sure accom-
paniments of times of earnestness and growth ; when
the full current of the inner life must, by reason of its
strength, cast itself forth into some new development.
Dull and lazy governors marvel at and hate such
times ; and there is mixture enough of evil in all such
movements to make such a feeling plausible at least,
if not natural. The mountain torrent which brings
down the dust of gold carries with it a heavy load of
far ignobler substances. But the opened eye reads in
such flood-times, with all their turbulence and perils,
tokens of the marvellous inworking of the Spirit, op-
portunities of co-operation with it, pledges of the
great restoration of all things.

It is in this spirit that I think we are called on to
look at the present time. The waters surely are
troubled, but what if the hidden presence of an angel
of the Lord has troubled them, and it be, if rightly
used, a time of healing from our God ?

.. Whilst then, I consider the actual ritual develop-
ments which have been so hastily adopted in their
novelty, multiplication, and amount, as rash, unad-
visable, and dangerous, may it not be that the attempt
to introduce them, and the amount of welcome they
have met with from many both of the laity and clergy,
point to some part of our present system which may
admit of perfecting ? This is a grave question. Most
of the heaviest blows dealt against our Church have
been the result of neglecting such intimations. If
Her rulers had read aright the signs of the times, and
tried the wise policy of supplying within the Church
that for which so many yearned, instead of retreating
upon what must always be the losing game of a chill
repression of the desires of a multitude of hearts, the

great Methodist division might, I doubt not, have
been prevented.

Does then, the present movement point to any want
to be supplied, or to any point to be gained ? I believe
that it does. There is, I think, clearly to be traced,
not only in our own communion, but in the more
earnest of the religious sects around us, a craving for
a more expressive symbolism in worship. This is
probably a re-action against the chillness in which
Puritanism has been long dying out, as well as against
the utter vagueness of modern doubts. Now, if this is
so, the wise ruler should, I think, consider whether it
is possible in any way to guide and satisfy so legiti-
mate a desire. Its mere repression may make some
sluggish and apathetic who might have been trained
up in all the glowing zeal of Christian soberness.
This is perhaps the great danger of the policy of bare
repression. It tends so terribly to dry up the springs
of an earnest spirituality of life. Besides this, it will
assuredly drive others over to adopt the deceiving
symbolism of Rome, which is ever lying in wait to
profit by any mistakes of ours. She manifests by her
undisguised hatred to all Catholic movement amongst
us, how well she knows the strength we might find
against Papal perversion in a satisfying amount of
English Ritual.

But here we are met, first, by the allegation that this
increased ceremonial is, after all, only the expression
of a feeble love of ornament, an unmanly desire to
deck out the ministers of the sanctuary in gorgeous
attire and sumptuous vestments, and is really incom-
patible with spiritual worship. This, when it is ex-
amined closely, proves to be the old Puritan objection
to the Church’s whole system of external rites and

ceremonies ; it really applies as truly to surplices
and hoods as to chasubles and copes. I need not re-
peat to you Hooker’s old argument against Travers,
to expose such fallacies as these. All God’s appoint-
ments in the Jewish, all early practice in the Chris-
tian Church, and all the symbolism of the Apocalypse,
alike contradict such a teaching. So much, indeed,
the more thoughtful objectors to all increase of ritual
admit. For they object to change, not on its own
account, but from their condemnation of the doc-
trines which the altered Ritual appears to them to
symbolise.

They regard our limited customary rites as an es-
sential part of our protest against Popery, and as all
which can safely be allowed without some danger of
restoring, with what they think Roman ritual, Roman
doctrine. With me, and I doubt not with you, so
far as our own judgment on the matter is concerned,
this is the very essence of the question. We would
tolerate no rites which do really favour the corrup-
tions of Rome.

But do facts and does reason bear out this view ?
Is it not rather contrary to the facts, and derogatory
to the character of our Reformation ; derogatory to
its character, as though it were directed against forms
and not against corruptions in doctrine, against an-
cient vestments, and not against the claims of Papal
supremacy and infallibility, against transubstantiation,
against the worship of the Blessed Virgin, against
purgatory, against withholding God’s word from the
people, against “ those sacrifices of masses in which
it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ
for the quick and the dead1.” The allegation that
t Art. XXXI,

Rome uses this ceremonial, of itself, proves no-
thing against it. The real question for us English
Churchmen is, Is it a use of Christian antiquity, or is
it a Popish addition ? for this is the very point of our
protest against Rome. We charge her with having
added her own superstitions to the great deposit of
primitive truth and practice which we hold and ob-
serve with her; and never, therefore, do we more
emphatically protest against her than when, rejecting
her novelties, we assert our own Catholicity by our
adherence to the old customs in their simplicity,
which, for herself, she has depraved with her super-
stitious additions. If the real rule were, the farther
from Rome the nearer to truth, we must equally
give up Scripture, Creeds, and Sacraments, and be*
come Rationalists, Infidels, or Brownists11.

The question, then, is one of fact. Are our present
rites all that the earliest times, or that our own most
learned Divines have admitted and practised ? There
can be no doubt about the answer to both of these
questions. The ceremonial of antiquity was far richer
than ours ; so was that in use by such great Anglican
Bishops, (to name no others,) as Cosin and Andrewes.
The real influence which, at the season of the Reform*

w Our Church has always disavowed this mode of argument;
hear, for instance, the language of the thirtieth Canon of 1603 : —
u But the abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it.
!Nay, so far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to
forsake and reject the Churches of Italy , France, Spain, Germany ,
or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and prac-
tised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it
doth with reverence retain those Ceremonies which do neither en-
damage the Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men :
and only departed from them in those • particular points wherein
they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integ-
rity and from the Apostolical Churches, which were their First
Founders.’ *

ation, lowered our customary ritual, was the presence
not of the anti-Papal, but of the Puritan element ; of
that element which wrought on according to its nature,
and never rested till it brought down, in one common
ruin, our Altar, our Prayer-book, and our Crown. It
was partly the need of Puritan support, partly the
desire of Puritan comprehension, partly the influence
of those who, after the Marian persecutions, returned
amongst us with the glory and influence of Confes-
sors, but with the feelings of the foreign rather than
of the English Reformers, which carried forward these
changes ; it was the force of these influences, and not
our protest against Rome, which gave its special
shape and colouring to our own ceremonial.

Of this I remind you, 1st, for the sake of historical
truth ; and 2ndly, because I see little hope of peace
amongst ourselves, and I see much danger of the
loss of many, if matters are to be discussed in heats
bred by misstated facts, and not in the calmness of
reasonable consideration.

Yet it may be urged, that, as most of the points of
ritual now in discussion, tend to exalt men’s estimate
of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, they must in-
cline towards Rome. This common allegation seems to
me to contain a most important error. The protest of
our Reformers against the Roman teaching as to that
great Sacrament, was not that it was lifted up there-
by too high in men’s estimation, but that its simple
grandeur was defaced by human additions ; that the
doctrine of transubstantiation was a modern rational-
istic mode of explaining what God had left unex-
plained ; that it was not making the transcendental
presence more real, but more material. All the Ro-
man corruptions of this great Sacrament seem to me
the results of applying to it this rationalizing process.

Instead of receiving with simple faith the institution
as a whole, and resting on the assurance of God’s
Word, that, duly ministered and received, it conveyed
to the receiver the partaking of the Body and Blood
of Christ, speculation set busily to work to pry into
what God had hidden, and ascertain how that corn
veyance was effected. Thus the immediate effect of
the prayer of consecration was to be defined ; the mode
of the Presence to be explained ; the difficulties attend-
ing it to be accounted for. Hence the solution of the
change in the Sacrament of the matter of the Bread
and Wine, with the preservation of their qualities ;
and, from this, the assertion of a material, and so,
in truth, of a local presence on the Altar, and with
this (as our Reformers most truly alleged), at once
the overthrowing the nature and mystery of a Sa-
crament, and the giving occasion amongst the igno-
rant, to those superstitious, if not idolatrous, uses
which are now so fearfully favoured by the new rite
of the Benediction. It was to this chain of error,
and not to the reality of the Presence, that our Re-
formers objected. I will not weary you with proving
this ; let, for such purpose, these few words of Ridley,
(Bishop and Martyr here in Oxford,) suffice. “Think
not because I disallow that presence v,” (the carnal
presence asserted by the theory of transubstantiation,)
“as a presence which I take to be forged, phantastical,
and beside the authority of God’s Word, brought into
the Church by the Romanists, that I therefore go about
to take away the true Presence of Christ’s Body in
His Supper rightly and duly ministered, which is
grounded upon the Word of Godx,” &c.

v “ Which the first proposition maintaineth.'*'

x Works of Bidley, Parker Society, p. 201.

There need not then, be any tendency toward
Rome, but on the contrary, a safeguard against her
wiles, in rites which shewed that we valued, as highly
as herself, this great culminating act of Christian
worship, whilst with our Fathers we protest in no
faltering tones against her corruptions of the great
primitive doctrine of the Eucharist, and refuse to re-
ceive the ungrounded fiction of a carnal, for the unques-
tioning certainty of a real Presence in it of our Blessed
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. A distinctive dress
then, for him who ministers at this celebration, need
not be Roman. It is indeed at this moment ordered
for our cathedral service ; it was in common use at
one of our Cathedrals within a century. It need not,
if unaccompanied by other causes of suspicion, shock
any now. I know not that I can better shew this
than by quoting to you some striking wTords of a bishop
of our sister Church in America, of the school of
thought most adverse to Rome, in answTer to the alle-
gation I have just dealt with : “ Our glorious Re-
formation was directed not against the ritualism of
Rome, so far as it retained the sanction of the Bible
and the Primitive Church, but against those false and
corrupt doctrines by which she had so grossly inno-
vated upon the pure creed of the Gospel. The main
labours of my ministerial life have been devoted to our
controversy with Rome, to the defence of our mar-
tyred Reformers, and to the vindication of our own
Scriptural, Apostolical, and really Catholic system y.”
“ I have little doubt that my children will behold the
‘ glory and beauty ’ of our public worship brought
back to its first stage in the Reformation, in accord-
ance with the rule which has never been formally re-

y Law of Ritualism, by Bishop Hopkins, of Yermont, p. 5.

nounced, and still remains in the rubric of the English
Prayer-book z.”

It may, I hope, allay the fears of some amongst us,
who value, as I do, the great inheritance of primitive
truth, won for us by our martyred Reformers, to see
that the sober flow of reviving ritual is not hostile to
that truth, and need not tend toward Papal corrup-
tions : that it may tend, if rightly guided, only to
restore to us what our Fathers had before those cor-
ruptions arose ; to revive old English, not to ape new
Roman, ways ; and that, so viewed, it maybe a move-
ment of God’s Spirit re-acting against the too preva-
lent inclination to remove all mystery from religion ;
a holy desire to mark more clearly in outward act and
sign that the worship of the Church even here, for each
one who has faith to read aright its true character,
is but the shadow cast on earth of the intercession
and the worship of the heavenly temple. Only let
it never be forgotten, that every increase of outer
ceremonial must be accompanied by an equal increase
in the simple preaching of the Gospel of Christ, and
of the heart’s devotion of the worshippers : for that
without this inward breathing of the soul under the
inspiration of the blessed Spirit, all external imagery
soon passes into the second death of a hypocritical
formality.

On the second movement, which appears to me to
have arisen from the same source as the ritualistic
tendency, I will compress into a few words the sug-
gestions I desire to make to you. To restore the true
unity of Christendom, — that for which our Master
prayed, that for which every heart He has touched
with His own love must most intensely long, — who

* Ibid., p. 98.

would not gladly die? Every such attempt then, —
whether it be to remove the barriers between our-
selves and our separated brethren in this land, or
to heal the breaches between the East and the West,
with their several subdivisions, — must, I think, attract
to itself our deepest interest, and call forth from us
most earnest prayers for the gift of one mind in our
one, common Faith. God forbid that I should chili
one such prayer, or check one such aspiration. Yet
I must remind you that all practical attempts at re-
union must be made with a full recognition of the
wide difference between mere coalescence and unity.
Coalescence may be of the earth, earthly ; it may be
the veiling of essential differences under well-prepared
ambiguities of action or of profession : unity must, in
our holy religion, be unity in Christ; and Christ is
Truth. There can be no unity in Him based on dis-
regard of error.

With these principles full in view, I yearn for the
re-union with us of our brethren of the home sepa-
ration. What might not be our strength against evil
if this sore wound were healed? I see no formal
differences of the faith which need hopelessly part
us. I believe that time has, to a great degree, worn
away the causes of our existing division. Let not
the memory of past disagreements keep us for one
day needlessly asunder.

Nor, with the great Eastern Church, if the spirit
of unity breathe in mercy on us, should I despair of
union. Old ways, old thoughts, old words, seem in-
deed to hang unchangeable, as in a charmed air,
throughout the venerable East ; and many of these
are diverse from ours. Still the East is bound to
no irreversible sequence of developed corruptions of

the One Faith , and with tier it may yet be that we
may regain open intercommunion.

But, earnestly as we may long and pray for unity, we
can make no overtures for it to any whose first principle
is the absolute retention of what we hold to be grave
error in doctrine and in practice. I see not how to
avoid the conclusion that this must make at present
impossible all such overtures from us to Borne. At the
very gate of her spiritual dominion sit the two stern
Portresses, Supremacy and Infallibility ; forbidding,
as it seems to me, all attempt to us to enter. “ Since
Rome” — these are her own words, spoken but yester-
day— “ is infallible, union with her cannot be accom-
plished except on her own dogmatic base, i.e. by the
method of absolute and unreserved submission to her
authority a.” How can we take the first step to such
submission, contending as we do against many of her
statements of Christian doctrine, and more of her
practical abuses ; against her claim to supremacy and
infallibility ; her cultus of the Blessed Virgin ; her
maiming of the Eucharist ; her enforced confession ;
her enjoined clerical celibacy ; charging her, as we
must, with Donatistic self-exaltation and schism ; and,
abhorrent as is to us that cruel, faithless, arbitrary
temper, which we believe these corruptions of the
Faith have introduced into her moral nature ? No,
Brethren, I mournfully declare that I cannot believe
that any honest explanation of conflicting terms can,
whilst Rome is what she is, remove these hindrances
to union. I, for one, could never, even for so great
an end as the doing away of division, endure to
see the English Church, the English people, English
family life, or English straightforwardness, adapted
to the standard in which Italy and Spain exhibit the
a Dublin Reyiew, No. xii. p. 448.

true consequences of Roman supremacy. I believe
that, — though we are bound to wait and pray and
watch for unity, — it is not, as I read the signs of the
times, — given to us in our day to look for union with
those who are of the Papal obedience.

Meanwhile, the old assumptions of Rome seem only
to increase in arrogance. With more than her earlier
hardihood she denies all membership in the Church
of Christ to those for whom she has rendered union
with herself impossible. Specially does she rage at
this time against National Churches, seeking in the
midst of its evident decline to exalt her own ex-
clusive monarchical supremacy, and, as her power
decays, waxing fiercer in her sentences and denun-
ciations. Yet is this against which she thus rages
the system which from the beginning had been esta-
blished in the Church, in which each Bishopric was
one independent whole, federally joined to all the
rest, the seat of its own jurisdiction, and governed,
not by an external despotism, but by the Holy Spirit
expressing His overruling Will through the decrees
of the common synods of the universal body. This
was most clearly the system which St. Cyprian main-
tained, and on which, in spite of all opposition,
he acted in all his memorable contests with Rome.
Her present pretensions differ in nothing material
from that which, in the mouth of John, Patriarch
of Constantinople, woke up the righteous wrath of
Gregory the Great, and led him, in his expostulation
with his brother Patriarch, to declare that “in as-
suming the name of Universal Bishop he had caused
scandal to the hearts of all the faithful, invaded the
rights of all other Bishops, and learned from the old
enemy to desire proudly to be like Godb.” And,

b St. Greg., Epist., lib. v. 18.

again, “ confidently to declare that whosoever calls
himself, or desires to be called Universal Bishop, is
the forerunner of Antichrist c.” The English Church
may surely rest quietly in a position in which she is
defended against Pius IX. by Gregory the Great.

Sad, too, as to loving hearts must often be the
sense of our isolation, may we not trace in the ex-
istence, and even, in some sort, in the separation of
national Churches, one of those providential arrange-
ments by which, even chastisements are, by God’s
goodness, converted into blessings ? Just as it seems to
have been His purpose to keep the perfect truth of
our blessed Master’s twofold nature ever clear before
the Church, by suffering four independent witnesses to
write the Gospel histories with the permitted varieties
which the diversity of their own several characters
stamp upon their narrative, — so may we believe that
He has provided, in the chastisement of division, by
the diversity of testimony, for the guardianship of His
Truth. How diverse from the beginning have been the
special vocations of the East and of the West ; — the
East maintaining, against all the subtlety of heretics,
the great objective truths of the Trinity in Unity, the
Incarnation, and the Godhead of the Eternal Son : —
the West, with its more subjective tendencies, defend-
ing the doctrines of grace from all the wiles of the
school of Pelagius. May it not be our special voca-
tion, in maintaining our protest against those changes
of the Faith which Rome has so corruptly sanctioned,
to be the Witness who shall combine the active
energies of the West with a maintenance of the pri-
mitive faith as absolute as that of the unchanging
East ; and at last perhaps to be the body whom God

c Epist., lib. viii. 83.

shall employ to fuse again into unity those who stand
on either side of her, — breathing younger life into those
venerable but lethargic Oriental forms, and drawing
back the West from the intoxication of her number-
less developments into the sobriety of the Faith once
for all delivered to the saints ? Only let us not forget
that if ever this service is to be rendered by us, it
must be by us not as a sect, but as a Church, that it
can be wrought. If we would keep alive the hope of
so glorifying God, we must maintain our true mem-
bership in the written Word, in Creeds, in Sacra-
ments, in the Apostolic ministry, and in the mysterious
presence, power, and gifts of God the Holy Ghost
with the Church of Christ from the beginning. So
alone can we hope in the mean season to leaven this
Land and its widening Colonies with the true life of
God. In spite of all difficulties, if He be indeed with
us, this we may accomplish. His Grace, His Word,
His appointments carry with them His Almighty
power ; and we, earthly instruments, as we are, by
the foolishness of our ministry may keep His revealed
truth alive to be the salvation of this Land.

These great functions God has committed to our
hands for this people, yea, and for His Church
throughout the world. May He grant us grace and
faithfulness duly to discharge our trust ! May no
slothfulness of spirit, no weakness of faith, no world-
liness of temper, mar our work and forfeit our Crown !
There are not wanting those who would counsel us,
by all the arguments of expediency, to take another
and a lower line. They urge us to consider the
greatness of the position we may aspire to fill as the
chosen clergy of this great empire, if we will but
throw ourselves into full sympathy with what they

tell us is its spirit, and speak to it the accents which
it loves to hear : “ Behold now,” it is the old whisper
of this world’s messenger, “ the words of the prophets
declare good unto the King with one mouth : let thy
word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them,
and speak that which is good d.”

It is but to give up the supreme claim of God’s
written Word; it is but to drop the stern require-
ment that men to whom it is clearly proposed must
believe in the dogma of revealed truth, and not
develope a suitable religion for themselves, conform-
able to the fleeting intellectual movements of the
hour, or the fanciful acting of their own inward con-
sciousness ; it is but to be content with the respect-
able position of doctors of the national religion,
and so to consent to give up claims which are un-
congenial with what are assumed to be the nation’s
opinions. Let us but get rid of the old-fashioned
notion that the Church is indeed the very body of
Christ, and we, servants of the Crucified, His Apostles,
with powers committed to us through the Dispensa-
tion of the Holy Ghost, which man gave not, and
which man cannot take away ; with a supernatural
kingdom around us and within us, — this is all, and
we shall be as gods to this grateful people.

God grant that not one of us may listen to the
seducing whisper, and so abdicate his trust. Let
Micaiah’s declaration be ours: “As the Lord liveth,
what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak®.”
Woe were it for us, woe to this people, if we failed.
If the Church of England ever consents to renounce
her Apostolical character, and to receive her com-
mission from man, she cannot for a day defend God’s
d 1 Kings xxii. 13. e 1 Kings xxii. 14.

F 2

truth against the Papist or the Infidel. In giving up
these pretensions, be they popular or unpopular at the
moment, she would give up that which from the be-
ginning has enabled her to withstand the enemy, and
to bless this land. How can she do for God any act
of her daily vocation unless His own power does in
very deed attend her ministry ? How else can she
believe that through her feebleness He will regenerate,
or convert, or nourish with the bread of life, one
single soul ? What miracle is greater than these her
daily works ? If she dared to drop her royal claim,
every sacrament she ministers would but seal her
degradation, and the subject spirits would triumph
at her fall.

No, beloved Brethren in the Lord, let us stand fast
in our holy calling. Let us witness for Christ, in word
and in deed. Let us speak in all the power of God the
Holy Ghost. Having received this ministry, let us
faint not ; no one better knows than we how earthly
are the vessels He has chosen for His service ; yet in
those vessels, earthly as they are, is the treasure of
the Master’s covenanted presence. Let us bear His
testimony meekly, but unflinchingly, learning our-
selves, through His grace and love day by day, to
live more in the secret place of His tabernacle ; to
labour for Him more abundantly, to pray more con-
stantly ; to abound more in works of charity ; and to
suffer meekly, if it be His will, so only that on us
may he more deeply stamped the impress of His
Cross. These, I believe, are the special requisites
for the due discharge, at such a time as this, of the
ministry which He has committed to us.

At such a time, moreover, distinct dogmatic teach-
ing must be especially required from those who
bear the testimony of the Lord. And yet with what

tenderness of spirit, with what wise adaptation to
His people’s power of receiving it, with what a free-
dom from spurious self-asserting dogmatism, with
what a living sympathy with all other truth, must
dogma be taught, if we would avoid the great fault of
placing stumbling-blocks in our brother’s way.

We cannot indeed, veil, still lest distort, any truth.
We must proclaim, — whether or no men will listen, —
the authority of God’s Word, the simple promises of
Christ’s Gospel; the mystery of the Triune God;
the Incarnation and Atonement ; the presence of God
the Holy Ghost and His real acting through Sacra-
ments and means of grace, on every side of us in the
Church of the living God.

But these great truths, and all that flow from
them, may be set forth drily, hardly, and pugna-
ciously ; or, with every winning adjunct of tender-
ness and conciliation, as a nurse cherisheth her chil-
dren. There may at times be forced upon us op-
position to what the general intellectual excitement
of the present day leads shallower minds to vent.
There ought to be no opposition between us and the
highest intellectual actings of our age. All that in-
tellect requires for its grandest development, Chris-
tianity not only allows but furnishes. The temper
she loves to form, that modest all-venturing courage,
that ardent docility, that tender receptivity, that
critical nicety of perception, that large observation,
is the very temper of the true philosopher. No ques-
tion can be raised which it is her interest to silence ;
there are few which it is not her special province to
handle. Christianity has always tended to advance
the intellect. Let any man who doubts this, study
the pages of Origen, Augustin, Athanasius, or Aquinas,

and he will see how the believing Divine may, in
mere power of thought, be centuries before the deep-
est thinkers of his time.

In some measure, perhaps, the too prevalent dis-
position to question this, is due to faults of ours.
If many of the reproaches cast upon us rise from
the carping poverty of thought which belongs es-
sentially to unbelief, many more, — let us honestly
confess it, — are the fruit of our own narrowness,
our want of a fitting elasticity of mind, making us
unable to sympathise with our age and our peo-
ple ; from our faithless fearfulness for the truth, and
our shallow knowledge even of our own mvsteries.
Hence, even for the power of teaching dogmas, the
first of all pre-requisites is to have received them
into our own spiritual life, not to have heard of them
merely by the hearing of the ear ; to have learned
them in watching and in living : above all, in a life of
continual prayer, to have so imbibed their blessed
fragrance, that our own life may be redolent of their
sweetness. This will give us depth and comprehen-
siveness, and these are but other names for humility ;
and, with that, dwell holy love, and large forbearance,
and tender sympathies, and unwearied labours ; so
shall we not hold dogma, but, — if I may so say, — be
dogma : so shall we place it before others, not as
a restraint on, but as an assistance to, the acting of
the intellect ; not as a short formulary to be produced
instead of thinking, but as the axiomatic principle on
which the vast edifice of thought is to be erected.
With dogmas so used, not thrust threateningly at
them, — men of any fairness will have no more quarrel
than with the axioms of mathematics, or the admitted
principles of science.

But time warns me to conclude. And, as I cast my
eye back on the various course over which I have been
led, I am indeed tempted to sigh forth my innermost
confession, — “Who is sufficient for these things?”
And yet, Brethren in the Lord, whether clergy or laity,
let me say, — Fear not ; be strong, play ye the men ; in
watching, in striving, in praying ; and your God shall
fight for you. It is yet but a little while, and He shall
come who is the Great Renewer. Already the East-
ern sky seems as though it were lighted up with the
brightening glow of its Advent glory ; the tarrying
ages are at last surely running out their weary span ;
and, by every sign of which He has spoken, we may
see that “ The Coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”

For each one of us, in his several sphere of work,
this is the thought fullest of strength and consolation.
Then shall end for ever, the upbraiding of the evil,
the uncertainty of the good ; then shall be swept away
our own doubts, and fears, and short-comings, and
divisions, and infirmities, our lack of faith and charity ;
then shall be gathered up every faithful effort, every
struggling prayer, every secret tear, every throb of
love ; then shall He who giveth the rule over Cities
to reward the diligent use of but a single talent, —
stand suddenly beside us in our work ; and the “ Well
done, good and faithful Servant,” shall sound in the
ears of the Elect, and the presence of their only Lord
shall wrap them round in perfect and never-ending
blessedness. Thither, Brethren, may God’s mighty
Grace bear on even our utter feebleness, through
Jesus Christ our Lord.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

The beneficed Clergy in the Diocese of Oxford who have
died in the interval between the Bishop’s Visitations of
1863 and 1866 : —

Rev. Frederic Robert Perry, P.C., Cachnore End, Oxon.

Rev. John Coker, R., Radcliffe, Bucks.

Rev. John Carlyle, R., Noke, Oxon.

Rev. Richard Sankey, V. and R., Witney, Oxon.

Rev. Isaac Eidler, R., Easington, Oxon.

Rev. James Brogden, V., Deddington, Oxon.

Rev. James Hearn, R., Hatford, Berks.

Rev. Thomas Clarke, R., Woodeaton, Oxon.

Rev. Joseph Gibbs, P.C., Clifton Hampden, Oxon.

Rev. John Athawes, R., Loughton, Bucks.

Rev. John Pavett Penson, V., Clanfield, Oxon.

Rev. Godfrey Richard Ferris, R., Hulcot, Bucks.

Rev. Robert Williams, V., Aston Rowant, Oxon.

Rev. William Wetherell, R., Upper Heyford, Oxon.

Rev. William Watson James Augustus Langford, V., Walling-
ton, Oxon.

Rev. Willtam Crabtree, R., Checkendon, Oxon.

Rev. Brisco Owen, R , Remenham, Berks.

Rev. Henry Curtis Cherry, R., Burghfield, Berks.

Rev. Robert Gibbings, Radley, Berks.

Rev. George Morley, V., Newport Pagnel, Bucks.

Rev. Edward Arnold, P.C., Loud water, Bucks.

Rev. John Harrison, V., Dinton (with Upton), Bucks.

Rev. William Lewis Buckle, R., Adwell, Oxon.

Rev. George William Curtis, R., Pad worth, Berks.

Rev. Isaac King, R., Bradenham, Bucks.

Rev. James Hazel, P.C., Nettlebed, Oxon.

Rev. Thomas Townson Churton, R , West Shefford, Berks.

Rev. John Ball, V., St. Lawrence, Beading, Berks.

Rev. Dempster George Gregory Dryden, V., Ambrosden, Oxon.
Rev. George Augustus Baker, R., Fingest with Ibstone, Bucks,
and Oxon.

Rev. Richard Pretyman, R., Middleton Stoney, Oxon.

Rev. George David Faithfull, It., Lower Heyford, Oxon.

Rev. Amos Hayton, P.C., Chearsley, Bucks.

Rev. John Samuel Baron, P.C., Brill with Boarstall, Bucks.
Rev. Thomas Tunstall Haverfield, R., Goddington, Oxon.

Rev. John Shaw, Y., Stoke Poges, Bucks.

Rev. William Cookson, Y., Hungerford, Berks.

Rev. David Joshua Evans, R., Remenham, Berks.

Rev. Robert William Scurr, R., Shenley, Bucks.

Rev. Henry Montague Grover, R., Hitcham, Bucks.

Rev. John Gould, R., Beaconsfield, Bucks.

Rev. Thomas Lea, R., Tadmarton, Oxon.

APPENDIX II.

Bournemouth , April 21, 1866.

To the Parishioners of Frant who attend the
Parish Church.

In the “ Tunbridge Wells Gazette” of the 13th instant,
appeared an anonymous charge made against the excellent
Curate and Assistant Curate of the parish, that they had
clandestinely, during my absence from home, introduced the
novelty of preaching in a surplice. My reply to that sin-
gular charge will have appeared, I trust, in the “ Gazette”
of the 20th instant.

I have this day received a letter which professed to express
the feelings of the Congregation. Supposing the writer of
it to have received authority from them to address me, I
frankly and respectfully regard it as a public document, and
circulate amongst them that letter and my reply.

Frant , April 19, 1866.

My dear Sir Henry, — During your absence, I deem it
my duty (although it is a painful one) to communicate to

you the feeling of dissatisfaction which has arisen among the
members of your congregation at the late introduction of
the surplice into the pulpit. This, added to the floral deco-
rations of Easter, has really wounded the consciences of
many members. The general feeling is so decidedly adverse,
that I fear on your return you will find a diminished con-
gregation.

I hope we shall not incur the fate of East Grinstead,
which began with floral decoration and ended with an empty
church.

Although unwilling to pain you by this communication,
I am the more impelled to enter upon the subject as I have
myself a strong personal feeling against these innovations.

Believe me, dear Sir Henry,

Very faithfully yours,

R. H. ALLNATT.

Rev. Sir H. Thompson, Bart.

Frant Rectory , April 21, 1866.

Dear Dr. Allnatt, — I desire to acknowledge your letter
of the 19th instant, “ communicating to me the feeling of
dissatisfaction which has arisen among the members of
the congregation at the late introduction of the surplice
into the pulpit also protesting against the floral deco-
ration of the Church at Easter.

As to the decoration of our churches at Christmas and
Easter, I never can recollect the time when this was not
customary. Years ago these decorations were confined to
holly at Christmas, and yew, I believe, at Easter. Recently,
many persons have considered it a privilege to contribute
their choicest flowers to decorate the House of God on these
occasions. This change, however, is only a matter of taste ;
and if our parishioners prefer the old fashion of holly and
yew, I need scarcely add that they shall see no more flowers
in our church during my incumbency.

The use of the surplice is a more serious point. It is not
merely a matter of taste, but founded on principle.

Somewhere about 1830, there sprang up a party in our
Church advocating doctrines and practices which incline to-
wards popery. To this party, I have always been most
strongly opposed, and I am more than ever opposed to them
at this moment.

Amongst other novelties, they have lately introduced into
our Church, at the administration of the Lord’s Supper, the
use of the garments worn by the Roman Catholic priest in
celebrating the Mass. This novelty has not yet made its ap-
pearance near us, but the subject is agitating the minds of
the clergy from one end of the kingdom to the other. The
question is coming before Convocation next week, and I
shall there have to express my sentiments, and to give
my vote.

Under these circumstances, I have carefully searched into
the law of the land and the law of the Church upon the sub-
ject, and I find that the surplice is the only proper dress
for the English clergy to wear in their public ministrations.
The exclusive use of the surplice was commanded in the
second Prayer-book of King Edward the Sixth. It was
ordered by the injunctions issued in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. It is enforced by the Canon published in 1603.
It is recommended by the example of the bishops, who
always preach in their surplices (called rochets).

I have therefore come to the conclusion that the best
mode of resisting the use of popish dresses, which cover
popish doctrines, is to render obedience to our Church’s own
regulations ; and in Convocation I am prepared to urge, with
this end in view, the use of the surplice in all our public
ministrations.

Hitherto, as regards my own practice, I have given little
heed to the distinction between a black gown or a white
one. At Frant we have preached in black, at Hawkenbury
always in a surplice. But now that I consider it my duty,
in resisting the progress of popish customs and popish doc-
trines, to adopt the use of the surplice in the pulpit at
Frant, as well as at Hawkenbury, I feel confident that the
good sense and the Protestant feelings of my parishioners

will induce them, on reflection, to commend rather than to
condemn the change.

I remain,

Dear Dr. Allnatt,

Faithfully yours,

HENRY THOMPSON.

To R. H. Allnatt, Esq., M.D., Frant.

APPENDIX III.

DIOCESAN CHURCH BUILDING SOCIETY.

The following are the Statistics since the autumn of 1863 —

16 new and rebuilt Churches.

23 restored Churches.

8 Parsonage Houses.

Grants made, £3,840.

Estimated cost of objects so assisted, £81,851.

Free sittings gained, 4,883.

Appropriated sittings, 610.

So that since the commencement of the Society in Feb., 1847,
the figures stand thus : —

64 new Churches.

25 rebuilt.

185 restored.

60 Parsonage Houses.

334

The grants during the whole period being, £27,397.
Estimated cost of objects so assisted, £425,075.

Free sittings gained, 38,332.

Appropriated sittings, 3,578.

Pastoral Letter— 1851, £1,337 16s. 7d. ; 1854, £1,447 9s. lid. ;
1859, £1,504 10s. 5d. ; 1862, £1,379; 1865, £1,866 10s. 8d.
Donations under “ Special Appeal,” £3,522 8s.

Grants made by the Oxeord Diocesan Church Building
Society, from 1863 to 1866.

During the Year 1863.

JV., stands for New or Rebuilt Churches; 0., Old Churches; P, Parsonage

Houses.

NAME.

Object.

Oxon.

Berks,

u cks.

Compton Church ....

Old Windsor Church . .

Chinnor Church ....

100

Turweston Church ....

• • •

Westbury Church ....

• . •

Bamsden Parsonage . .

Edgcott Parsonage ....

Beading, St. Mary’s
Reading, St. Mary’s

150

100

Thatcham Church ....

100

Monk’s Bisborough Church .

• • •

120

Pitcheott Church ....

Bradenham Church . . .

. .

Lewknor Church ....

Burnham Church ....

St. Giles’s, Beading

150

Upper Hey ford Church . .

St. Ebbe’s Church, Oxford .

300

Windsor Church ....

200

Westcott Church, Waddesdon

. .

100

Eritwell Church ....

Letcombe liegis Church .

Wardington Parsonage

23 Grants. Totals

£660 1 £860

£520

Summary.

| Oxon,

Berks.

Bucks. 1 Total.

New or Bebuilt Churches

, ,

. ,

500

Too , 4

600

Old Churches

585

360

370 16

1315

Parsonage Houses ....

50 | 3

125

Total 1

660

~8|

860

520 (23

2040

During the Year 1864.

NAME.

Object,

Oxon.

Berks, j

Bucks.

Taplow Church

. . .

Ravenswood Church . . .

Kintbury Church ....

100

Pangbourne Church

100

Stoke Mandeville Church

Little Brickhill Church . .

Pawley Church

Pinstock Parsonage . . .

Marlow Parsonage ....

• • •

Tyler’s Green Parsonage .

• • •

Newton Blossomville Church

North Leigh Church .

Penny Stratford Church . .

• • •

100

Noke Parsonage ....

Wet Sandford Church

Bloxham Church ....

300

Prince’s Risborough Parsonage

1 7 frT'cm'f.S T'nfolc!

j? a hS

! D/i7 n

Summary.

New or Rebuilt Churches
Old Churches . . . .

Parsonage Houses . . .

Oxon.

Berks.

Bucks,

Total.

300

200

500

405

# .

, ,

515

100

160

260

505

300

420

1275

During the Year 1865.

NAME.

Object.

Oxon.

Berks, i

Bucks.

Merton Church

Drayton Parslow Church . .

• . •

Rotherfield-Greys Church

Mursley Church ....

Abingdon Church ....

. . .

300

Touchen End Church .

Chesterton Church ....

Drayton Beauchamp Church

Aston Abbotts Church . .

• • •

Datchett Church ....

Bin field Church ....

100

Britwell Salome Church . .

Easthampstead Church

• • •

Newbury Church ....

200

Maidenhead Church . . .

•

225

Ascot Heath Parsonage . .

1 fr-m-nta T'r.fala

Summary.

Oxon.

Berks.

Bucks.

Total.

, New or Rebuilt Churches

675

. .

750

Old Churches

130

240

285

655

Parsonage Houses ....

. .

Total

205

960

285

164455

During the Year 1866.

NAME,

Witney Church ....
Oving Church ....
Blackbourton Church . .

Little Marlow Church
Wroxton Parsonage
Upton-cum-Chalvey
Shippon Parsonage . .

Denton Church ....
Prince’s Risborough Church
Cookham Dean Church
Hungerford Church

1 1 Grants. Totals

Object,

Oxon.

Berks.

Bucks.

180

120

• . .

• • •

100

• • •

150

£260

£235

£345

Summary.

Oxon,

Berks.

Bucks.

Total.

Hew or Rebuilt Churches

150

120

270

Old Churches

210

225

470

Parsonage Houses ....

100

Total

260

235

345

840

Grants made by the Diocesan Church Building Society.
For the Year 1863.

Oxon.

Berks.

Bucks.

Total.

New or Rebuilt Churches

9 #

500

100

600

Old Churches

585

360

370

1315

Parsonage Houses ....

125

Total

660

860

520

2040

For the Year 1864.

New or Rebuilt Churches

300

200

500

Old Churches

405

515

Parsonage Houses ....

100

160

260

Total

505

300

420

1275

For the Year 1865.

Now or Rebuilt Churches

675

750

Old Churches

130

240

285

655

Parsonage Houses ....

Total

205

960

285

1455

For the Year 1866.

New or Rebuilt Churches

100

200

120

420

Old Churches

280

325

640

Parsonage Houses ....

. .

100

Total

430

i 285

1 445

14 1160

Grants made on November 20, 1866.

NAME.

Object.

Oxon.

Berks.

Eton Wick, Bucks. . . .

Hailey . i

100

Buckingham

•

• • •

Witney

4 Grants. Totals

£170

Bucks.

100

£150

Total Amount of Grants for the Years 1864, 1865, 1866.

New or Rebuilt
Oburcbes.

Old Churches
Enlarged or Restored.

Parsonage

Houses.

Oxfordshire

175

815

150

Berkshire

1175

275

100

Buckinghamshire .

320

670

160

Total

1670

1760

410

Total number of Grants, 47.
Total amount of Grants, £3,840.

APPENDIX IV.

Summary of Operations of Diocesan Board
of Education.

1. Number of schools assisted by Building Grants in

1863 13 schools. Amount expended J295

1864 10 „ „ „ 235

1865 8 „ „ „ 255

2. Fund for Books and School Materials, amounting to

£50, of which the Society contributes one half, has been
expended each year in small grants — in the year 1863 to 14
schools ; 1864, to 11 ; 1865, to 11 ; exclusive of £30 expended
in Book Grants to 6 parishes from the General Fund.

3. Fund for Salaries , amounting to £100, of which the
Society contributes one half, has enabled — in 1863, 9 schools ;
1864; 11; 1865, 10, to secure the services of Certificated
Teachers on first establishing the schools.

4. The experiment of an Ambulatory Schoolmaster, on
the plan of Miss Burdett Coutts, has been tried with some
success.

5. Fund for Prizes awarded by Diocesan Inspectors
amounted to — in 1863, £58; 1864, £64; 1865, £54; exclu-
sive of £20 granted in aid of the “ Diocesan Prize Associa-
tion” in 1864.

Sources of Income to the Board.

1. Last Pastoral Letter Collection, £1,017 from 359
parishes.

Present Pastoral Letter Collection up to November, 1866,
£525 from 180 parishes.

2. The annual subscriptions, donations and collections for
the three years, average £510 each year.

An analysis of the subscription list of 1865 gives a total
of 314 clerical subscribers, and
126 lay do.

Total 440

F. Menzies, lion. Sec.

APPENDIX Y.

The detail of these works of mercy at Clewer may be
seen by running the eye over the subjoined statement.

The Penitentiary Work in the House of Mercy, Clewer ;
in the Manor House, Oxford; in the House of Mercy,
Bovey Tracey.

Orphanages at Clewer; Bloomfield - place, and Soho,
London.

Schools, Bloom field-place, Soho ; St. Andrew’s, Wells-
street, London ; Middle Class, and Poor School, Folk-
stone.

House of Charity and Mission House, Soho.

St. Andrew’s Convalescent Hospital for men and women,
Clewer ; and St. Luke’s Hospital, Torquay.

In the House of .Mercy, Clewer, 80 penitents; in the
Manor House, 32 ; in House of Mercy at Bovey Tracey,
22; iu the Orphanage at Clewer, 42 children; in the Or-
phanage, Bloomfield-place, 34 children ; at Soho, 30 chil-
dren ; at the School, Bloomfield-place, 30 boarders ; in the
St. Ann’s Schools, Soho, from 70 to 100 day-scholars; in
St. Andrew’s, Wells-street, about 70; in the Middle School,
Folkstone, 101 ; in the poor school, 50; at the Convalescent
Hospital, 30 at present. The new hospital will hold 50
patients.

From the House of Mercy, Clewer, 164 penitents have
left : 55 have gone to service, 32 to their own friends, 17 to
other penitentiaries, 26 from their own choice, 10 from sick-
ness, 1 died, 1 emigrated, and 22 were sent away for mis-
conduct.

APPENDIX VI.

The works of mercy carried on at Wantage, and the
success granted to them, may be gathered from the fol-
lowing statement: —

1. The charge of penitent women.

2. The charge of a middle school for the daughters of
tradesmen, &c.

3. The charge of an industrial school.

4. The charge of a training school for mistresses of village
schools.

The places in which these are carried on are — (1.) Wan-
tage, where two houses are held by the sisters ; (2.) Bed-
minster, near Bristol ; (3.) Lostwithiel, in Cornwall.

There are 25 penitents in Wantage, 16 in Bedminster, IS
in Lostwithiel; 45 children in Middle School, 12 in the
Training School, 15 in the Industrial School.

89 penitents have left the House in the last three years ; of
whom 25 have gone to service, 15 to other Homes, 26 have
left by their own desire, 8 are with their parents, 10 have
been sent away, 3 sent to hospitals, 2 ran away.

APPENDIX VII.

The following is the detailed statement of the Oxford
branch of Clewer : —

Penitentiary at the Manor House. Parish work in Holy-
well and Wolvercot. Accommodation for 32 ; present num-
ber, 29. Penitents left for service, 21 ; returned to friends,
15 ; sent to other homes, 28 ; to workhouse, 3; left at their
own desire, 36.

APPENDIX VIII.

To the Editor of the “ Times.”

Sir, — I have read some portion of the correspondence
which has lately appeared in your paper respecting the pub-
lication of the banns of matrimony during the Morning
Service of the English Church ; and, although it was not
my intention to interfere in the controversy, I am led to
do so in consequence of a letter which was published in
“ The Times” of yesterday signed “ W. Forsyth,” and dated
from the Temple, which seems to call for some remarks.
The learned writer not only states his own very positive
opinion, but he also says that “ It is impossible to read the
words of the Act (the statute 4 George IV., c. 76, sec. 2)
and put the interpretation upon them contended for by the
Bishop of Oxford and Mr. Burgess, without straining them
in the most ‘ non-natural ’ sense;” and he adds, “no lawyer
can have a doubt upon the point.” With all due respect
for this learned gentleman, I beg leave, in the name of my-
self and many other members of the profession, to protest
against being included in this very summary and sweeping
declaration. Many years ago I carefully examined the ques-
tion, What is the legal and proper time during Divine Ser-
vice for the publication of banns? and I came to a very clear

and decided opinion (which time and reflection have subse-
quently confirmed) that the only lawful time at Morning
Service is, in conformity with the direction of the rubric in
the Office of the Holy Communion, immediately after the
Nicene Creed ; while in those churches in which Morning
Service is not performed, and where in consequence there
was considerable difficulty respecting the publication, the
Legislature has supplied a remed}r, and directed that, in
those cases, the banns shall be published at Eveniug Ser-
vice after the Second Lesson.

Now I venture to state, without fear of contradiction, for,
to use Mr. Forsyth's own words, “No lawyer can have a
doubt upon the point," the rubrics of the Book of Common
Prayer, having been distinctly and positively confirmed by
the Act of Uniformity (the Statute of the 13th and 14th of
Charles II., cap. 4), are as fully and as absolutely part and
parcel of the Statute law of the realm as the Marriage Act,
the Statute of the 4th of George IV., cap. 76, to which Mr.
Forsyth refers ; and no lawyer can hesitate to admit the
general and indisputable rule of law for the interpretation
of Statutes, that when two Statutes seem to be contrary to
one another, yet, if by any construction they can both be
so construed that each may take effect, they must be so
construed, and that no Statute, and no part of a Statute,
shall be deemed to be repealed unless the older enactment
is absolutely at variance, and wholly irreconcilable with, the
later. The numerous authorities cited in Viner’s “Abridg-
ment," title, “ Statutes, E. 6 in Comyn's “ Digest," title,
“ Parliament, R. 9 and in Bacon's “ Abridgment," title,
“ Statute D," place this rule beyond controversy ; and if the
rule is thus clear aud unquestionable, the only question must
be whether the Act of Uniformity — that is, in this case, the
rubric — and the Marriage Act are inconsistent or irrecon-
cilable, and I venture to submit that no considerate person
can possibly maintain that they are. Mr. Forsyth imputes
“ straining the Marriage Act in the most non-natural sense
but, to my very plain understanding, there can be no such
difficulty ; the sense is obvious, the construction natural.
There can be no necessity for making the words at the con-

elusion of the paragraph of the Act, “ immediately after the
Second Lesson,” override the previous portion, and, in my
opinion, the real “ straining,” or violence, would rather lie
on the other side ; while, with the rule of construction before
us which I have just cited, whereby the rubric and the Mar-
riage Act are at once harmonized, I cannot help thinking
that any other construction than that for which I contend
would be alike unlawyerlike and unlawful.

As the opinion of the late Baron Alderson has been cited
(but entirely passed over by Mr. Forsyth), I will take the
liberty of stating that I was, if I mistake not, the first per-
son who brought this subject under that learned Judge’s
consideration, for being in conversation with him several
years before his death I started the question, and stated
what I considered the proper time for the publication of
banns. Fie seemed surprised, and hesitated at first to adopt
my view ; but when I explained my reasons he immediately
expressed his entire agreement with me, and stated that
I was undoubtedly correct. I must also mention that on
another occasion I put the same point to the late Mr. Jus-
tice Parke, and that he, too, like Baron Alderson, at first
thought that I was wrong, but that when he heard my rea-
sons he gave the most complete and undoubting assent to
the argument.

Under these circumstances I must crave permission for
myself and others to dissent entirely from the sentence
passed by your learned correspondent, unsupported as it
is by any reasoning, and to continue to hold, with the two
excellent Judges whom I have mentioned, that ‘the inter-
pretation of the law for which I have contended cannot
easily be impugned, and must be upheld by the pro-
fession.

The reference made by Mr. Forsyth to the Statute of the
25th of Henry VIII., cap. 19, seems to me entirely irrele-
vant, and I really cannot understand the object with which
it is cited in his letter. The question is not one respecting
any Canons, or as to their binding effect ; it is simply a ques-
tion of Statutes, and whether one of two Statutes, or (which
is really the same thing) a Statute, and certain rules ex-

pressly confirmed by a Statute, and whether they may not
easily, and must not legally, be construed together, so that
each may be preserved.

I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant,

EDWARD BADELEY.

Temple , Dec. 20.

Note on the Rubric in the Communion Office immediately
after the Nicene Creed .

This rubric requires that the banns of matrimony shall
be published on the ending of the Nicene Creed in the
Communion Office, . . . and the practice wdiich prevailed in
England for many years was consonant to this rule, the
banns being always published during the Morning Service
on Sundays after the Nicene Creed. The Marriage Act,
26 George II., c. 33, directs that the banns shall be pub-
lished “ in the form of words prescribed by the rubric pre-
fixed to the Office of Matrimony in the Book of Common
Prayer, upon three Sundays preceding the solemnization of
marriage, during the time of Morning Service, or of Evening
Service if there be no Morning Service in such church or
chapel upon any of those Sundays, immediately after the
Second Lesson.” And afterwards, in the same section . . .
it is said, “ And all other the rules prescribed by the said
rubric concerning the publication of banns and the solemni-
zation of matrimony, and not hereby altered, shall be duly
observed.”* It is evident, therefore, that the Statute did
not intend to interfere unnecessarily with the directions of
the rubric, and it is also evident, by reference to the facts,
that the object of the Legislature was to provide for the
publication of banns during the Evening Service in churches
where there happened to be no Morning Service, for this
was the only thing which required a remedy, inasmuch as
no provision had been made by any rubric or by any Statute
for the publication of banns at Evening Service, the Com-
munion Service being uniformly part of the Morning Service,
or used in the morning ; and therefore, in churches where

that service was not used, the banns could not be published
at all. There was therefore no necessity for the Statute to
interfere with the publication at the Morning Service in the
accustomed manner and at the time prescribed by the rubric,
and it was quite sufficient for giving full effect to the Statute
to construe the direction for publishing the banns after the
Second Lesson, with reference to the publication at the
Evening Service alone.

Now there can be no doubt that when there are two Statutes
in pari materia , (and the rubric is in fact Statute law, as it
is obligatory by the Act of Uniformity,) the rules of law
require that the two Statutes should be construed together,
and that they should be so construed, as if possible to give
effect to each, and not to allow either to repeal or annul the
other in any respect, unless the latter Statute is mainly and
necessarily inconsistent and irreconcilable with the former,
in which case alone the older is considered to be pro tanto
repealed by the more recent. But instead of acting on
these rules, the clergy have construed the Statute of
George II. as if it annulled the rubrics referred to; for they
have made the words in the section u after the Second
Lesson,” override the whole sentence, so as to apply to the
Morning Service as well as to the Evening. Whereas if
they had construed the Act and the Rubrics, reddendo
singula singulis , according to the Rules of Law, they now
have understood the words “ during the time of Morning
Service,” according to the existing directions of the rubric,
and should have continued to publish them at that part of
the Morning Service which the rubric requires, viz. after the
Nicene Creed. . . . The Printers of the Prayer-book have
committed a flagrant breach, or rather a succession of breaches
of the law, for they have not only chosen to put their own
construction upon the Statute, which undoubtedly is a false
one ; but they have, in order to carry out their own false
construction, actually omitted altogether that portion of the
rubric after the Nicene Creed, which directs the publication
of the banns, and also substituted a new rubric of their own
at the commencement of the Marriage Service, although the
Statute says nothing which in the remotest degree authorizes

any alteration of the rubric.” — The Book of Common Prayer ,
with Notes Legal and Historical. By Archibald J. Stephens ,
Barrister-at-Law. ( London , 1850, vol. ii. p. 1151.)

APPENDIX IX.

Resolutions unanimously agreed to at a Meeting of
Archbishops and Bishops, held at Lambeth Palace on
Ascension-day, 1866.

Present,

Archbishop of Canterbury.
,, York.

,, Armagh.

Bishop of Winchester.

„ St. David’s.

,, Oxford.

,, St. Asaph.

,, Llandaff.

,, ' Lincoln.

,, lilPON.

Bishop of Bangor.

„ Rochester.

,, Gloucester and Bristol.
,, Peterborough.

,, Ely.

„ Sodor and Man.

„ Derry and Raphoe.

„ Grahamstown.

,, Brisbane.

,, Sierra Leone.

1. That it is not expedient to alter the Statute or Canon

Law with a view of extending the Diaconate to persons
engaged in professions or business.

2. That it is desirable to institute an office of Reader, and

that the form of admission to the same be by public
prayer and delivery of the New Testament by the Bi-
shop, without imposition of hands, and that it be held
until the Bishop shall, by an instrument under his
hand, remove the holder therefrom.

3. That the office be exercised in any particular Parish or

District under the Bishop’s licence, issued with the
written consent of the Incumbent, revocable at the
discretion of the Bishop, either mero motuy or at the
written request of the Incumbent.

4. That the office be unpaid.

5. That the licence of the Bishop empower the Reader —

1. To render general aid to the Clergy in all minis-
trations not strictly requiring the service of one in
Holy Orders.

2. To read Lessons in the Church.

3. To read Prayers and Holy Scripture, and explain
the same, in such places as the Bishop’s licence
shall define.

APPENDIX X.

Secker’s Second Charge as Archbishop of
Canterbury, a.d. 1762.

“ It is peculiarly unhappy, that while we are employed on
one side in defending the Gospel, we are accused on another
of corrupting it. I have not now in my view either the
Church of Home, or the Protestants who broke off from us
a century ago. The methods of dealing with both have
been long since prescribed, and I repeat them not ; but
intreat your attention to the movements of each, especially
the former, if you have any of them in your parishes. But
I mean to speak of persons risen up in our own times, and
professing the strictest piety : who vehemently charge us
with departing from the doctrines and slighting the pre-
cepts of our religion ; but have, indeed, themselves advanced
unjustifiable notions, as necessary truths, giving good people
groundless fears, and bad ones groundless hopes ; disturbed
the understandings of some, impaired the circumstances of
others ; prejudiced multitudes against their proper ministers,
and prevented their edification by them ; produced first dis-
orders in our Churches, then partial or total separations
from them, and set up unauthorized teachers in their assem-
blies. Where these irregularities will end, God only knows,
but it behoves us to be very careful, that they make no pro-
gress through our fault.

“Now, it would not only be injurious, but profane, to
brand with an opprobrious name, Christians remarkably
serious, merely for being such ; and equally imprudent to
disclaim them as not belonging to us, to let a sect gain the
credit of them, and labour to drive them into it. Surely
we should take, even were they wavering, or actually gone
from us, the most respectful and persuasive means of rc-

calling such, and fixing them with us. Nay, supposing any
persons irrevocably gone, we should not be hasty to con-
demn, even in our thoughts, either them or their party, as
enthusiasts or hypocrites : ivhatever they are , it maketh no
matter to us. And much less ought we to say of either
worse than we are sure they deserve. When we are un-
doubtedly well-informed of any extravagant things which
they have asserted or done, it may be useful to speak
strongly of them, but not with anger and exaggeration,
which will only give them a handle to censure our un-
charitableness, and confute us; but with deep concern, that
when so few persons express any zeal for the Gospel, so
many of those who do, run into extremes, that hurt its
interests. Nor will ridicule become our character, or serve
our cause better than invective. It may please those very
highly who are in no danger of being proselyted by them.
But what shall we get by that ? Persons negligent of reli-
gion will at the same time be confirmed in their negligence,
and think that all they need to avoid is being righteous over -
much. Tender minds will be grieved and wounded by such
ill-placed levity, and crafty declaimers will rail at us with
success as scoffers denying the power of godliness. But if we
let fall any light expressions that can be wrested into
a seeming disrespect of any Scripture doctrine or phrase,
we shall give our adversaries unspeakable advantages, and
they have shewn that they will use them without mercy or
equity. Therefore, we must guard every word that we utter
against misrepresentations : be sure to express in public
and private our firm belief of whatever evangelical truths
border upon their mistakes, and certainly be as vigilant
over our behaviour as our teaching ; encourage no violence,
no rudeness towards them, but recommend ourselves to
them by our mildness, our seriousness, our diligence ; ho-
nour those who are truly devout and virtuous amongst them,
much more on that account than we blame them for being
injudicious and hard to please; and be full as ready to ac-
knowledge the good they have done as to complain of the
harm ; yet beware, and counsel others to beware of being
drawn by esteem of their piety into relishing their singu-

larities, and patronizing their schism.”- — Seeker's Charges.
Second Charge , pp. 256 — 9. (Published by Rivington, 1799.)

We have, in fact, lost many of our people to sectaries by
not preaching in a manner sufficiently Evangelical; and
shall neither recover them from the extravagancies into
which they have run, nor keep more from going over to
them but by returning to the right way, declaring all the
counsel of God ; and that principally, not in the words
which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth.” — lb., Third Charge , p. 276.

|)rmteb b]» primes unb dto., Gtrotott-imrb, (i&xforb.

CHARGE

TO THE CLERGY AND CHURCHWARDENS

OF THK

DIOCESE OF SALISBURY,

AT HIS TRIENNIAL VISITATION,

IN MAY, 1867.

BY WALTER KERR,

BISHOP OF SALISBURY.

SALISBURY :

BROWN AND CO., CANAL.

LONDON: RIVINGTONS. OXFORD: PARKER.

MDCCCLXVII.

SALISBURY :

BENNETT, PRINTER,
JOURNAL OFFICE.

TO THE

CLERGY AND THE CHURCHWARDENS

OF THE

DIOCESE OF SALISBURY,

THIS CHARGE

IS AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED,

BY THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND AND SERVANT,

W. K. SARUM.

Palace, Salisbury,
May 6th, 1867.

TABLE OP CONTENTS.

PAGE

Thoughts about — a. Those pre-
paring for last account. b.
Those gone to give it
Bishop Cotton

Colonial Churches and their Al-
tered Relation to us
Pastoral Letters for Missions
Curates’ Augmentation Fund ...
Church Education
Memorial about Visitation at Wim-
borne

How far the Statements in Appen-
dix are Tests of your Work ...
General Avowal of Inadequacy
Work

The Results of our Work depen-
dent on Principles of Truth ...
Difference about these Principles
The Consideration due to my
Statement...

T o what Doctrines Statement refers

Other Truths at root of these ...

The Incarnation

Its Purpose

Its Fulfilment

The Church

Union of Christ with His Church
Illustrated

This Body both Visible and In-
visible

Importance of this Distinction ...
The Questions now raised about
the Body were of old raised
about Head

Other Doctrines in their relation
to this one
Caution

All Living Members of Head hold
His Offices

Scripture Evidence of this
Its Fulfilment

Others held these Offices, e.g.,
Apostles ...

Also their Successors
Scruples on this Subject
A priori Objections and so Scru-
ples met ...

20
of

26
26
28

34
34
34

PAGE

Especially by the Doctrine of the
Incarnation ... ... 44

And through a Fact in Natural
Order ... ... ... 44

Historical Evidence of Delegation
of Functions ... ... 45

What these Functions are ... 46
Priestly F unctions ... ... 46

The Sacrament of Lord’s Supper
a Sacrifice ... ... 47

The Consecration of it ... 49

The Oblation ... ... 51

The /j.v7iii6(Tvyov ... ... 52

The Feast on the Sacrifice ... 53

The Judicial Power ... ... 54

Its exercise ... ... ... 55

Main Conditions of Public and

Private Discipline the same ... 56

Recapitulation ... ... 57

A Disclaimer ... ... 58

Helps to Receive the Testimony
of the Church ... ... 60

The Bishop of Exeter’s Witness 62
I might appeal to Undivided
Church ... ... ... 68

Question of Honesty raised ... 68

Doctrine of Primitive Church
might be alleged, as ours ... 69

Evidence of our own Formularies,
as settled in 1662 ... ... 70

Three Truths which help to under-
stand these Formularies ... 71

Church Teaching about Consecra-
tion ... ... ... 72

Church Teaching about Effect of
Consecration ... ... 74

Evidence of Objective Presence
from Catechism, &c. ... 75

From other Parts of the Prayer

Book ... ... ... 76

From the Rejection of Changes
proposed by Wm. III. Commis-
sioners ... ... ... 80

And from the 28th Article ... 80

Witness to Commemorative Sacri-
fice by Church ... ... 81

Witness of Church to Absolution 83

PAGE

This Teaching Supported by great
Anglican Authorities ... 84

The Question of Honesty is a
vital one ... ... ... 86

And concerns Negative as well as
Positive Doctrine ... 87

Ritualism ... ... 89

The Question is not whether there
ought to be any Outward Re-
ligion ... ... ... 89

But what is authorised ? ... 91

Considerations con. ... ... 92

Considerations pro ... ... 95

Have these pro Statements been
fairly considered ? ... 98

PAGE

Remedies Proposed Insufficient... 99
My Diocese has but little want of
such Remedies ... ... 101

Roman Tendencies and their
Cause ... ... ... 101

Position of the Church of Rome. . . 102

Position of the Church of England 103
Possible Issues of the Present
Struggle ... ... 107

The best Issue ... ... 109

My Hope that it may be reached 1 1 2
Much Depends on Laity ... 113
Address to Laity ... . . . 1 1 3

Address to Clergy ... 1 1 7

Statement about Myself ... 127

APPENDIX.

Incumbents Deceased ... 133

T abular S tatement of S ervices, &c. 1 34
Pastoral Letters ... . . . 1 34

Missions ... ... ... 134

Parish Schools ... ... 134

Training School Statistics ... 135
Churches Consecrated and Re-
stored, &c. ... ... 136

Result of Inspection of Schools 137
Bishop of Exeter’s Letter about
Curates’ Augmentation Fund 143
Memorial from Wimborne to hold
Visitation there ... ... 143

Canon of S. Augustine ... 143

Chart of Ministerial Succession 144
Teaching of Church Catechism
about the Sacraments ... 146

Change in the Declaration at the
end of the Communion Service 146
Bishop Geste’s Letter ... 147

Sacrifice of Praise and Thanks-
giving ... ... ... 147

The Power to Absolve ... 149

Transubstantiation ... ... 159

The Teaching of Church about

a. The Power of the Keys ... 148

b. The Real Presence ... 153

c. TheCommemorative Sacrifice 157
Sacraments — Number of ... 160
Outward Religion — Its action on

Soul ... ... ... 160

Eirenikons — Baxter’s Estimate of 160

Our Past Neglect Prejudices our
Claims ... ... ... 161

Erastianism ... ... 161

Our Formularies are not a Com-
promise ... ... 162

Anglican Doctrine ... ... 162

Voluntary Celibacy — Baxter’s Es-
timate of ... ... 162

The Dignity and Importance of
the Ministry ... . .163

The Meaning of the Words of
Ordinal, “Receive the Holy
Ghost, &c., &c. ... ... 163

The Relation of Dissenters to
their Ministers ... ...164

The Septuagintal use of notetv ... 165

CHARGE

ETC.

My Reverend and Dear Brethren,

I am thankful that I was permitted at this
morning’s Celebration again to give the Thoughts about
Bread of Life to so many of you, who had paricf0u,;t!ast

„ b. Thosegone

before, on one or more occasions like the to give it.
present, sought this gift of God through my minis-
trations.

It has been His will to permit us still to retain
our places in His Kingdom on earth, and He has so
willed it, we believe, in mercy to us, and because He
has still work for us to do in His strength.

Some, however, who were three years ago guests
with us at our Lord’s Table, as our fellow labourers
in His vineyard, are no longer with us in the flesh.

This cannot but be on some accounts a matter of
sorrow to us ; but yet our hope about them is, that
as we have been left here in mercy, they have been
taken in like mercy, and that, their appointed duties
having been done, their works have followed them to
receive the approval of their God and Saviour.

These, my Brethren, are two thoughts, which, it

seems to me, must be uppermost in our minds when
we meet at a Visitation.

The very object of your being cited to meet me
here to-day is to render an account of your work,
and, if need be, to have questions decided for or
against you concerning it.

And it is to give an account that our Brethren
have been taken from us. They have gone to appear
before the Just and the Holy One ; and by their very
absence they remind us all that we have to follow
them, and to take our place in their company at the
great day of judgment. God grant that our reunion
to them may be not in despair, but in joy and
gladness.

The number of those who at the last Visitation
were sharers with us in the work of the ministry in
this Diocese, and have now been withdrawn from our
company, is twenty-seven.

In the Appendix3 you will find a record of their
names, and though it is impossible for me to pay
them all any larger tribute of brotherly affection, I
shall make an exception, as I have done before, in
the case of those who have held office in my Diocese.

Of these twenty- seven, two had been members of
our Cathedral Body, namely, the Rev. Robert Moore
and the Rev. John Guthrie. Three had been Rural
Deans, namely, the Rev. Robert Moore, the Rev.
Crosbie Morgell, the Rev. James Templer, and one
had been my Chaplain, namely, the Rev. Sidney Lear.

As head of this Diocese I feel myself a debtor to

a See Appendix, p. 133.

them all, on account both of good work done for the
Diocese, and of personal kindness to myself.

Prebendary Moore was a remarkable instance of an
earnest, holy man, who could combine very strong
convictions with feelings of hopeful charity for those
who differed from him ; and all persons, who needed
a friend, knew that the Rector of Wimborne St. Giles
recognised in every good object and case of distress
a claimant on his heart and substance.

Canon Guthrie exemplified the blessedness of a
good man’s having this world’s goods placed by
God’s Providence at his disposal ; and all his parish-
ioners, and their present Yicar, and I, as Patron of
Caine, thank God that He put it into His servant’s
heart to raise at the close of his life a noble
monument to his memory, in the beautiful restora-
tion of his great Parish Church. I must also here
add that in all his acts of Christian charity and
munificence he owed not a little to his excellent wife,
who has gone to her rest since his death.

Crosbie Morgell was taken from us in great
suffering; and I shall never lose the recollection
of that face of distress, and often agony, which had
ever before told of a warm genial heart, strong
sympathies, and a faith which witnessed to its powers
in love for his friends, and patience and cheerfulness
under very peculiar trials.

In James Acland Tempi er I always found a true-
hearted warm friend, and one who was ever ready to
assist me ungrudgingly in any work entrusted to
him by his office.

In my last charge I felt at liberty to tell you of
my own special share in our then common sorrow
through the loss of my two dear friends and
chaplains, Henry Drury and William Beadon
Heathcote; and now, just as I was taking the
first steps to cite you to appear again at a Visitation,
I was called upon to attend to his grave another of
my Chaplains, Sidney Lear.

No one can tell how much a Bishop owes for the
discharge of his duties to those who are immediately
around him, and in his special confidence. My
Chaplains know, I trust, how gratefully I am ever
prepared to acknowledge this, and I am sure that
they would all say that no claim upon his Bishop for
such services during his health could be greater than
that of my dear Chaplain, Sidney Lear.

Nor did his services to the Diocese, or to me, cease
with his health. He was for many years an invalid ;
but he did not on that account think that his work
was done, but only that more time was given to him
for the function, which was so specially his, the
function of an intercessor. His life was a most
saintly one, spent in the closest communion with
God ; most edifying to all who knew him, and, as
we have reason to believe, most powerful for good to
very many. One of his many trials was to be
obliged to spend a large portion of the latter years
of his life in a foreign country, and it was when
thus away from us all, that he received the tidings
that his work was done. His departure was in
perfect peace and joyful hope, in the most entire

trust in his Saviour, whilst he derived, through
the ministrations of our branch of the Church, his
Saviour’s promised help and comfort. You will, I
know, my Brethren, forgive his Bishop for thus
speaking of his Brother and Chaplain.

There is one more of whom I must also make
special mention, though he has left us for

Bishop Cotton.

nine years, — I mean the late able, noble-
hearted, single-minded Metropolitan of India, George
Edward Lynch Cotton.

He came into this Diocese two years before I was
called to my present office, and for the first four
years of my Episcopate I enjoyed the privilege of
his friendship. One thing we had before that in
common, and that is an intense and what could not
but be a lifelong reverence and affection for that
most attaching of friends, Dr. Arnold ; and during
the six years he was at Marlborough he proved that
he had not enjoyed that great master’s friendship to
no purpose.

But, if he has a claim on our gratitude, as a
former Head of that most remarkable foundation of
the present generation, namely, Marlborough Col-
lege, he has a still stronger claim, in my judgment,
on us as the Bishop of Calcutta. His was that
honest, clear mind, which was willing and able to
apply to all existing circumstances any sound reme-
dial treatment, whether new or old.

The event with regard to his use of any new
remedies only justifies the anticipations which all
who knew him had formed of him, and so it is

rather to his use of the older ones that I am spe-
cially referring.

Thus he at once saw the very special value to the
Missionary in India of the Athanasian Creed; and
he raised, in most remarkable words, which I quoted
to you in my last Charge/ a warning against the
tendency in some minds to depreciate that which is
the strongest barrier, as I said in that Charge/
which cc the enlightened intellect of the Church has
raised against the encroachments of error, and so in
reality against the limitation of God’s incompre-
hensible Truth to the narrow rule of mere human
opinion.”

Had he but this one claim, as a Bishop of our
Church, for our reverence and love, namely, that he
has thus testified to the necessity of building the
Church of India “ on the strong rock of dogmatic
teaching,” I should be foremost in calling him
blessed.

But ask his clergy for their testimony to his cha-
racter, as a faithful, able shepherd of his flock ; and
especially ask those who have gone forth to testify
to the heathen the grace of God, and to gather in to
the fold of the Lord those whom He has ordained to
life ; and these Missionaries, I am told, will, with one
voice, confirm what I have said — they will parti-
cularly point both to his firm endeavours to remove
any invidious, and worldly marks of distinction be-
tween those whose ministrations had the sanction of

a Charge of Bishop of Salisbury, 1864, p. 52.
b Charge of Bishop of Salisbury, 1864, p. 51.

1 o

the State and those who had not, and to his noble
efforts in behalf of Christian education.

An appeal is now being made both to all those
interested in the well-being of Marlborough, and so
in the memory of him to whom Marlborough owes
so much, and also to those whose ears are opened to
hear the cry for help which heathendom is, in God’s
Providence, making to the Church of England, to
raise in India a worthy memorial to this great and
good man ; and surely nothing can give a more
persuasive force to such an appeal than this testi-
mony of his clergy of which I have just spoken.
Most earnestly do I hope that the proposed object
may be secured, and that thus, through offerings to
our Lord in memory of His servant, another proof
may be given to the Church that the life blood of
the saints is a great fertiliser, through the over-
rulings of God’s Providence, of the kingdom of the
Lord.

I must also add, that we know that our dear
Brother was ever living in the thought that his
departure might be very near at hand ; and I like to
believe that the appointment of a successor of such
rare intellectual power and spiritual grace as my
dear friend the present Bishop was an answer to his
saintly predecessor’s prayers for his Diocese.

But if we have had to mourn the loss of so devoted
a servant of the Lord as Bishop Cotton,

Colonial

there is very much for which to thank God ^rcaieteredd

in the vigorous and healthy condition of all

the Colonial Church, and I must add emphatically

for the preservation to us of that remarkable man
and great champion of the faith, the Metropolitan of
Africa.

I am not about to use the occasion of this natural
mention of one whom I so reverence and love, to set
before you in any detail how his trials have affected
the future of the Colonial Churches and their rela-
tions'1 to the Church of England.

That the recent decisions in the Appeal Courts of
the Privy Council and by the Master of the Rolls,
have produced great complications, you are all as
aware, as I am, and I trust that you also share
my hope that out of these decisions great good may
come, not only to the daughter Churches, but to their
Mother, the Church of England.

And this hope is surely greatly strengthened by
the tokens we are receiving from America and our
Colonies of their united wish to strengthen the bonds
of communion between themselves and us, and by
the seeming willingness of our Government to em-
body in any necessary legislation on this subject,
sound Ecclesiastical principles.

If you wish to master the whole question, out of
which these most eventful changes have arisen, I
advise you to obtain the Statement put forth this year
by the Bishop of Capetown, and published by Bell
and Daldy.

When I was speaking of the death of the late Metro-
politan of India, I expressed my belief that it had

a See a Sermon and Appendix by the Metropolitan of Canada,
entitled “ Pan-Anglican Synod.’' Rivingtons.

helped and was still helping to reawaken to some
extent the mind of Churchmen to the little, which, in
spite of the great exertions of our societies, is being
done to make our colonies and the heathen partakers
of the blessings which we have ourselves inherited
from the Faith and Charity of preceding ages. My
belief is, and I am sure it is well founded, both that
a call has been addressed to us all to do more than
we have done for Missions, and that we are bound to
give heed to it. And this has in part led me to issue
a Pastoral Letter to my Clergy, and to re- Pastoral Letters
quest them to make at my instance, and forMissions-
under the protection of a dutiful deference to my
wishes, an additional collection this year in behalf of
the Foreign Missions of the Church.

I lay a stress on the word additional , because I
find by my correspondence with some of my Clergy
that the letter is sometimes only looked upon as a
reminder to do something; whereas my real inten-
tion is to obtain for our Lord’s work, through your
ministrations, an offering over and above what this
Diocese would otherwise have made to Him.

And as I am speaking about Pastoral Letters,
I may add here, that I have been urged to curates’
request you to bring before the notice of AugFundatlon
your congregations the Curates’ Augmentation Fund ;
but I have declined to do so this year on the ground
that I had already issued one Pastoral Letter. This
is certainly the only ground of my refusal, as I
entirely appreciate the object of the fund, and think
that those large hearted, charitable, just men, who

originated the plan deserve our best and united
support. This they ought to be able to rely on,
as no questions about which Churchmen differ,
can be alleged as a hindrance to a willing advocacy
of their claims.

There is but one difficulty in the way of this ; and
that is a feeling of delicacy some of you may have in
making an appeal for our brethren to the charity of
the laity. This, however, may be in a measure re-
moved from all personal considerations by the cir-
cumstance I have already alluded to — namely, that
the Clergy will be discharging a duty which they
admit their Bishop has a right in such a matter
to urge them to undertake. I shall print in the
Appendixa an admirable letter which the Bishop of
Exeter has addressed to his Clergy on this subject,
and which, I think, ought to help you to welcome
mine, should I live to issue one next year.

You will also find in the Appendix13 such informa-
tion as you will desire to have about many Diocesan
matters, and which is derived, from your answers to
the questions which I have addressed to you, the
Reports of Societies, and the Returns of the Inspec-
tors of Schools in the Diocese.

But I cannot refer you to this statement without
at the same time tendering my most sincere thanks
to all who have in any way assisted me to carry on
the work of the Diocese — the Archdeacons, Rural
Deans, and Secretaries of Societies ; and I am sure
that to none are my thanks more due than to all
those who have, whether as Rural Deans or Assistant
".See Appendix, p. 143. See Appendix, pp. 134 to 142.

Inspectors, done so good and laborious a work as the
Inspection of Schools.

I wish, my Brethren, that I could add to this
expression of my thanks to my Inspectors church
an assurance that I am less anxious than I Educatlon*
was about the future of Church Education. But I
cannot do so.

As far as I can judge, though I admit that my
judgment may be warped by my fears, the great and
pressing question of a National Education for all who
require the assistance of the State will eventually be
decided in favour of a secular system, that is, one
based on the principle that morality is independent
of religion, and so the teaching of the former
separable from the teaching of the latter.

Such an issue will be indeed a deplorable one. But
there is another thing which I dread far more than
such a conclusion, and this is the process by which
it seems not unlikely we may reach it. This process
may render the Church unfit to deal with the evils,
which its acts of concession to, and co-operation with
those who will only use her for her own ends, will
have fostered and produced.

The concession I am specially alluding to is that
held in the acceptance of the Conscience Clause, and
which is proposed to school builders as an arrange-
ment, which will in no way weaken the religious
teaching of the school, but only equitably meet and
relieve the scruples of dissenters, and even, through
such consideration for them, possibly disarm their
opposition, and so really leave in most cases the
religious teaching of the school where it was.

But I have no hope that such will be the result.
Persons who get legal claims established will most
surely and most justly shew their value for their
rights, and will soon take steps to secure for their
children the same privileges of definite religious
teaching, which the Church is to have, it is said, ex-
clusively; and I for one could not refuse to help them
in what I should deem, in their altered circumstances,
a righteous effort for their children’s well-being.

Any one, however, who will calmly consider what
would be the result of such a further — and, as I
think, right and necessary — concession, and what
complications of strifes and difficulties would arise,
will not have much confidence in the continuance,
under those altered circumstances, of a so-called
religious education.

Nor can I see that any plea of fairness to those
who pay the taxes makes it a duty to engraft such
principles upon our present system.

It may, indeed, be objected to our present system
that the result of all these voluntary efforts is most
inadequate/ and that it must be altered into a com-
pulsory and so larger one, and that this compulsory
system must provide for all alike, who need educa-
tion, whatever be their creed. But there is no
grievance to conscience in the present principle of
State aid, or in its past carrying out. The principle
of our present system, called the Denominational
one, is to assist all Christians in carrying out

a See what Mr. Prebendary Fraser says about exaggerations
with regard to Educational Destitution in a letter to the Times ,
April 16. 1867.

their own efforts to educate their own poor, and as
long as this principle is faithfully acted up to, no
one seems to me to be dealt with inequitably.

But I need not say more about it ; the answers
you have given to the Question I submitted to the
Decanal Chapters last autumn show me that you are
aware of the perils to which the adoption of the
clause exposes Religious Education.

The Question was — “ What is called the Con-
science Clause professes to embody two principles,
namely, the principle of unrestricted freedom in
teaching the doctrines of the Church, and the
principle of unrestricted power of withdrawing from
such teaching ; could the Church safely and honestly
admit such a clause into the trust deeds of its
schools.”

The discussions seem to me, as far as I have seen
any details of them, to have been full of interest, and
I am sure that the majority of those who took part
in them would wish that this question could be finally
removed out of the way, before more persons are
accustomed to the great comfort of Government aid.
This wish holds the only drawback I know to our
thankfulness for the late changes made by the Com-
mittee of Council on Education in their Regulations.

In the spring of last year I received a Memorial*
from twenty- three of my Clergy, twenty- Memorial about

_ Visitation at

four Churchwardens, and one Sidesman, Wimbome.
requesting me to hold my Visitation at Wimborne
instead of at Blandford, on the ground of conve-

a See Appendix, p. 143.

B 2

nience, and the special fitness of the Minster for
such an office. The only answer I gave the memo-
rialists was, that I would give their request my best
consideration.

Nor have I neglected to do so. Of course it is
patent to every one that the whole circumstances of
the country are now so altered that old arrangements
may often be less convenient than when first made,
and we must all feel a very special interest in so
glorious a House of God as Wimborne Minster. Still
the result of this consideration was to postpone my
decision to a future time, when perhaps I may have
come to some good conclusions, with a view to the
convenience of all parties, about rearranging the
places at which I hold my Visitation.

The Statements which I have told you will be
How far the found in the Appendix to this Charge, are

Statements in n . . . . p .

Appendix are oi course to some extent tests oi the

tests of your

wen*, efficiency with which since my last Visita-
tion you have discharged your duties “as fellow
workers with God.”

But these results only witness to some of your
ministrations, and there are many other parts of
your work which my enquiries cannot reach, and of
which therefore your answers can give no evidence ;
and there are still others which must be secret to
every one but God Himself, and which He alone can
weigh in the balances of a discerning and just
judgment. You have, I am sure, already anticipated
that I am referring to your confessions, prayers,
intercessions, giving of thanks, study of God’s

word, your preparations for the discharge of your
functions, your endeavours to carry into all your
ministrations the sympathy and authority of Jesus
Christ, as ministering in His name, your strivings
to release that sinner from the bonds of his sins, to
give strength to that weak believer, to win the
gainsayer to be a defender of the faith, to pour the
balm of the Gospel into the wounds of that sorrow-
ful doubting heart.

But though I can have taken no account of these
and such like things, I may, I am sure, say General avowal

of inadequacy

to you with the full approval of your of work-
consciences, first, that even these admitted results
carry with them the avowal that you might have
done more for God and His people than you have
done ; and, secondly, that the other results, which
are unknown to me, hold still fuller proofs that in
many things — in, for example, word, and doctrine,
and prayer, you have all been guilty of manifold and
grievous shortcomings.

In such a general avowal of guiltiness before God
you are all, I repeat it, agreed, and in this confes-
sion I take my part with you ; and it is in the belief
that we are now thus met in the presence of God
with a spirit of such self humiliation, that I go on
to speak of other matters, which some of you have
in your answers alleged as the causes of the inade-
quacy of these results of your ministrations.

The work which has been committed to us, and
its issues, are indeed bound up in the The results of
counsels and grace of God with great

principles of truth, and so without doubt our work
has been marred, if from any cause we have used as
instruments for our work other than these princi-
ples. About this, again, there can be no difference
of opinion.

Would that I could say the same about the question
Difference about what these principles are! But the fact
these Principles. j cannot do so, only makes it the more

important, that I should, for your sake and my own,
speak to you very explicitly on this subject ; and this
I am about to do, and that with the prayer of David,
“ Lead me forth in Thy Truth, and learn me.”a

To you, my brethren, I would further give the
assurance that I have prepared this statement with
the thought ever before my mind, that whilst the
Truth is one, there is more than one side to it — that,
owing to the limitation of the powers of our mental
vision, it is difficult to see all sides of it at once —
that circumstances often help to attract, perhaps
unduly, to one side more than to the other sides
these limited powers — that many difficulties arise
from misapprehension — and that such misapprehen-
sion may often be traced back to a Godly jealousy for
some portion of Truth seemingly slighted, and to a
faulty over-balancing the claims of another portion.

And of you, and for myself, I ask that calm, equit-
The considera- able, thoughtful, patient, dutiful, charitable
statement. ny consideration of my statement, whether it
fails or [succeeds in approving itself to your judg-
ments, which every Christian man owes to his

a Ps. xxv. 5.

brother, and which obligation includes most surely
those, who stand to one another in the relation, in
which you, whether Clergy or Laity, stand to me as
your Bishop.

If I confined myself to matters, in which late
events have seemed to give me a kind of Xo what State.
personal interest, I should only speak of mentrefers*
one Doctrine. But I purpose doing more than this.
Other Doctrines are at this moment subjects of very
special controversy, and I consider it is my bounden
duty to speak to you as plainly about them, as about
the one to which I have alluded, namely, the Doc-
trine of Absolution.

These Doctrines are a part of that entire Reve-
lation, which God has been pleased to make to us
about the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. They
embrace our functions as His members, Who is the
intercessor of the Church — and the charge which
He has committed to His Church about binding and
loosing — forgiving and retaining sins — or, as is com-
monly said, the Power of the Keys.

For the sake of greater clearness I will at once
explain to you in the fewest words what are these
Doctrines to which I thus refer.

The Doctrines are these —

(1.) That certain men have had entrusted to them
by God “ as fellow workers with Him,” some Super-
natural Powers and Prerogatives.

(2.) That, for example, God has been pleased to
give to them, as His ministers, the power of so
blessing oblations of bread and wine, as to make

them the channels of conveying to the soul, for its
strengthening, and refreshing, the Body and Blood
of Christ.

(3.) That as Christ, our ascended Lord, is now
ever pleading His one sacrifice, so these ministers
of Christ, as His representatives, plead on earth
that which He pleads in Heaven.

(4.) That God, Who alone can forgive sins, has
delegated to these same His ministers the power and
authority of ministering to those fitted to receive it,
the pardon of their sins, or to express the same
thing in very well known words,a “ Almighty God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hath given
power, and commandment to His ministers, to de-
clare and pronounce to His people, being penitent,
the Absolution and Remission of their sins.”

Such, my Brethren, are the Doctrines which have
of late been so much controverted, and if I have
thought it right for the sake of clearness, and so due
both to you and myself, to make this statement of
them, in the baldest and most naked way, I am not
content to leave it thus, and you must bear with me
whilst I present these truths to you in their fuller
proportions, and support them by their proper
authorities, and remind you of other Truths in which
those, now so questioned, are rooted.

These Truths relate to the Church of Christ, and
other Truths at t< o Him, Whose Body she is, and no hypo-
root of these, thesis of Divine grace in the sacraments or
of any particular prerogatives of the Clergy, can

a Morning and Evening Prayer.

receive a fair and candid consideration, till the mind
is well instructed in the revelation which God has
been pleased to make of the mysterious relations, in
which Christ and the Church stand to one another.

Were I speaking to those only whose professional
studies make them necessarily very familiar with
these truths, I should probably leave out much of
what I am about to say — but I am, indirectly at
least, addressing all over whom God has been pleased
to place me, the Laity as well as the Clergy, and of
all these — those who have not been summoned to
attend this Court as well as those who have — and
the truth, in the presence of which I would place
and keep you during my address, and from which
every appeal I may make to your minds and hearts
will draw its power, is the marvellous mystery of the
Incarnation of the Son of God.

Very few words will suffice to place you in that
presences S. John tells us that “in the The
beginning” — at that most distant point of Incarnation
time when the foundations, not of this lower universe,
but of that higher heaven were laid, whose denizens
“ sang together and shouted for joy,” when they wit-
nessed the creation in after ages of our heavens and
earth, the Word of God “ was ” — not was made — but
was , “ was with God” — “ the brightness of God’s
glory” — and so coeval and coexisting with that
glory — the glory “which He had with God before
the world was.” And S. John also tells us that

a See a most remarkable volume of Sermons by the Rev. W. J.
Edge on the Second Adam.

this Being — the Word — thus consubstantial, co-
eternal, coequal with the Father, “ was made Flesh,”
or, in other words, that the Divine Nature became
incarnate by the Incarnation of the Eternal Son.
He the Son of God, by the operation of the Holy
Ghost, “took man’s nature, in the womb of the
Blessed Virgin, of her substance ; so that two whole
and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead
and Manhood, were joined together in one Person,
never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God
and very Man.”a

Well, then, indeed may S. Paul have exclaimed,
when he was expounding this truth, which he had
himself grasped with a strong faith, “ Great is the
mystery of godliness.” In his case he was witness-
ing to his felt communion with the Incarnate One,
with Him “Who is perfect God, and perfect man,
of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.”

God grant that this may be the case with ourselves.

But there was a purpose in this. The Incarnation
was the beginning, so to speak, of the
P P bridal union between the divine and human
natures. It was ordained, it was effected, that men,
through the Incarnate Son, might become “ partakers
of the Divine Nature.”

And to this end He, Who was made flesh, to
undertake the office of a mediator, became

Its fulfilment. . .

m the discharge of the functions of that
office, a Prophet, a Priest, a King.

Thus, when we tell of His Sermon on the Mount,

a Art. ii.

of His Parables, of His foretelling the destruction
of Jerusalem, of His teaching, and guarding by His
Spirit the truth and purity of Doctrine, we confess
Him to be our Prophet.

And when we witness to His death on the cross,
and acknowledge the tenderness of the mercy of
Almighty God our Heavenly Father, in giving His
Son to “ make there (by His one oblation of Himself
once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole
world,” we confess Him to be a Priest.

We do the same, when we herald forth the tidings
that He consecrated bread and wine to impart to
us Himself so sacrificed. We do the same, or rather
we expound another statement of the Doctrine of His
Priesthood, viz., that in S. Paul’s words “ He is a
Priest for ever,” that “ He apideth a Priest con-
tinually,” and that “it is of necessity that this man
must have somewhat also to offer,” when we bid you
to look with the eye of faith within the veil, and to
behold there the Saviour pleading His one sacrifice.

And when we keep the Feasts of Easter and
Ascension, and Whitsuntide, we are celebrating the
announcement which He made in rising from the
dead, in ascending into Heaven, in sending down the
Spirit of grace, in forming His Church to make, to
receive, and govern His converts, that he is King of
kings and Lord of lords, and that, as the GoD-Man
He is ruling His Church with the power and wisdom
of God.

When, then, I am speaking of the Prophetical,

The Church.

Priestly, and Begal offices of the Mediator, I am
describing not only what He was during His earthly
life, but what He is now at the right hand of God,
not subject to any limits of time and space, and what
He is doing here on earth by His Spirit, the Spirit
of Truth, Whom the Father sent, in answer to the
prayer of the Eternal Son, “ to abide” with His
Church “ for ever.”a

Before our Lord left this world He had formed a
visible society, the members of which were
bound together by the external bond of
profession ; but the whole state and condition of this
society was to be altered and bettered by His leaving
them. It was to receive a benefit, which the hitherto
visible body and blood of the Son of Man could not
confer, namely, the benefit of an union of its
members with Hini and with one another. The
expediency (to use His own word) of His departure
from His Church arose from this, that He would come
again in the Person of the Holy Ghost — His Spirit —
and give His disciples His life, and by this gift of
His life make them, as I have just said, one with
Him, and one with one another, and enable them to
express their relation to Him, the fruitful vine, and
the rich olive tree, in the fruits of a pure faith and
loving obedience.

This relation of the Mediator to His Church is,
Union of Christ indeed, my Brethren, a great mystery ; but

with his Church , ■, . . . . n

illustrated. Qqd has been pleased, m consideration of
the weakness of our powers to understand what

a S. John xiv. 16.

is the nature of such an union, to represent it to
us in Holy Scripture in sundry and different ways.
Thus, for example, he speaks of' a Kingdom ; and
again, of a Bride, in loving whom He loves himself,
and whom He has gifted with the dowry of means of
grace, and supernatural powers and prerogatives.

But the image which perhaps sets before us most
vividly the details of this union is the one given to
us so specially by S. Paul, in that chapter where he
explains with great fulness the principle, which he
thus summarises — cc As the body is one and has
many members, and all the members of that one
body being many, are one body, so also is Christ.”

In this passage the great Apostle teaches us that
when we contemplate a body — its complex organisa-
tion, the number of its members, their different
functions, their harmonious working, their subor-
dination to, and dependence on one centre principle,
their being organs, that is, of one invisible, directing,
controlling soul, we have before us an earthly and
material counterpart of the Kingdom of the Saviour.

In other words, when we speak of the body of Christ,
we mean an organism consisting of many members,
each of whom has some one vital function to dis-
charge, while the co-operation of all is needful for the
comeliness and the usefulness of the whole. In this
body of Christ the meanest is helpful to the noblest ;
the noblest has a service for the meanest ; all alike
owe their health, or recovery of health, to their not
being separated from the rest ; and by the due dis-
charge of their appointed functions, as organs of the

one whole, are to work out the fulfillment of God’s
gracious purpose, as known to and declared by S.
Paul, when the body will be so edified, and shall
so evidence its being “ the fulness of Him that
filleth all in all,”a that all its members shall have
come “ in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

My next point is that this body is both a visible
This body both and an invisible body. When we speak of

visible and

invisible, the Church of Christ, we are speaking of
that City of God, the New Jerusalem, which is
invisible, and so which faith alone can discern.
Her head, the Lord Jesus Christ, is invisible. The
Holy Ghost, the Divine Person Whose descent at
Pentecost was a restoration of Christ’s presence to
His bereaved Church, is an invisibly present Person.
Although the fruits of His blessed presence strike
the eye and the ear, He works in His Kingdom, He
calls us, He sanctifies us, by a continuous unseen
agency, even as He is Himself of necessity invisible.
“ The powers of the world to come,” which have
been entrusted to this body for the use and edification
of its members, are invisible. The assembly of the
spirits of the just, which have been sanctified and
made perfect through these powers, is itself invisible.
The living members of this body, who are still
amongst us, whose hearts are the dwelling place of
the Holy Ghost, are not to be distinguished from
others by the eye of man. They are “ the Lord’s
secret ones,” and as such are invisible.

■ Eph. i. 23, iv. 13.

St. Paul’s illustration will remind us that it is with
the Church, as with man. Character, intellect, moral
earnestness — these things we do not see in our
fellow men; we only witness their effects. The
largest and highest side of human life — the Soul is
invisible. Still man is on another side visible ; he is
not a phantom; he has a real material body, by
which he enters into the world of sense, and becomes
visible.

And so it is with the Church of Christ. That
company of men who have been grafted into the
Holy Body, and who remain in connexion with it,
and who give tokens more or less distinct that the
Holy Spirit is training them to enter in due season
into the invisible assembly of the Church triumphant,
is a visible company. And indeed the whole Church,
the field with its tares as yet unconsumed, the net
with its bad fish not yet cast away, forms one visible
polity, or kingdom, which bears, as Christ predicted,
traces of imperfection and failure, while yet it wit-
nesses to the reality and endurance of His Empire in
the world. The Ministers, the Sacraments, the
Word, the ordinances, and godly usages of this
body are all visible. They appeal to our senses, and
our ears and eyes and hands recognise them, as they
guide us through this world to the entrance of the
Valley of the Shadow of Death.

We may, therefore, in speaking of this body,
represent it, with sufficient accuracy as imp0rtanceof
visible on this side — invisible on that ; and this distinction-
I purposely insist on this from being satisfied that

many of our difficulties, many of our supposed
differences, arise from either believing that there are
two bodies, instead of the one body of Christ, or
else from forgetting that this one body, which is in
the truest sense invisible, has a visible manifestation
of itself in this world — acts upon all whom Christ, its
Head, has redeemed, through a visible ministry, and
visible means of grace.

And I would confirm what I have thus said
The questions about the Church, by reminding you further
theBody, were of that the questions of recent centuries, which

old raised about A

Head- have been raised respecting the Church are
parallel to those which in earlier ages were discussed,
and ruled in regard of her Incarnate Head.

The Ebionites, looking solely to what is external,
taught that Christ was only man. The Nestorians,
separating that which is internal from what is external,
tried to persuade men that Christ was two distinct
Persons, the Son of God, and the Son of the Virgin,
only outwardly joined together. The Eutychians,
from not distinguishing that in Our Lord, which met
the senses, from that which was superhuman, con-
founded the two natures, and were guilty of the
heresy which was condemned by the Fathers at
Chalcedon.

A merely human polity — two polities, one Divine
and one human — a polity in which the human
element is forgotten; these heresies stand in con-
trast with the true historical counterpart of the
Incarnation, a society in which there is the perfectly
Divine and the perfectly human, for ever united, but

not confused ; the Son of Mary tarrying amongst
men, yet in the truth of His higher nature the
Everlasting Son of the Father.

I have now, my Brethren, fulfilled, as far as my
time permits me to do to-day, my purpose of placing
you in the presence of the Incarnate Saviour, in His
presence as the Head of a body, and so in the
presence of the Doctrine of the Church : and, as I
said I had a special intention in doing so, I will go
on to advise you what I believe is the truth with
regard to those other Doctrines, to which the con-
sideration of this one is, it seems to me, a necessary
introduction.

The question which naturally arises after such a
statement as I have just made, is this, Other doctrines

_ in their relation

Wbab are the prerogatives of the members tothisone-
of that body which is the Hew Jerusalem, in which
Jesus Christ is dwelling by His Spirit, Who is the
Lord and the giver of Life ?

And, first, one word of caution to you, and of
protection to myself. I have reminded you

1 J ,J Caution.

that Christ is filling the offices of Prophet,

Priest, and King. In His discharge of the functions
of these offices He is alone, unapproachable. He
alone teaches — He alone intercedes — He alone rules.
And whatever I say about the teaching, or the inter-
ceding, or the ruling of others, ought not, I protest,
to be so perverted as to be exposed to the charge of
intruding upon or interfering in the slightest degree
with the prerogatives of that Prophet, that Priest,
that King, Who is the one and alone Mediator
between God and man.

At the same time, I would also warn you not to
think to give due honour to the Lord by depriving
His members of any honour which He may be
pleased to confer on them, as His instruments, but
rather, whilst gratefully acknowledging His marvel-
lous condescension in putting such honour on the
children of men, as to be in any sense “ fellow-
workers with Him,” to strain every power of mind
and heart to realise His claims, Who is the Almighty
God, as well as the Son of Man.

Having said this, I am not afraid of asserting that
ah living members — all who are par-

H^aThoid ms takers of His fulness, and so of His Spirit,
°ffices' the Spirit of Life, all who bear the fruits
of their engrafting into Him, the Vine and Olive Tree,
in deeds of faith and love — do in some way, bestowed
by Him, share the three offices which by right
appertain to Christ Himself alone ; and give in them-
selves the true interpretation of those words of the
Holy Ghost, Christ “has made us kings and priests
unto God and His Father,” and “ ye have an unction
from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”

My Brethren, these accounts of the Prophetical,
scripture evi- Priestly, and Regal characters of the sub-
dence of this. jects 0f the kingdom of the Incarnation are,
I repeat it, parts of Holy Scripture ; and you know
Who has said “ The Scripture cannot be broken.”
And here I would apply this general Truth to this
particular case. The Holy Ghost, Who

Its fulfilment. * . J 5

spoke of Christians as Prophets, Priests,
and Kings, did so to express definite, pre-ordained

relations in which the Members of Christ were to
stand to Him their God, and has provided that there
should be a discharge of the functions which His
words have thus attached to the condition of Chris-
tians, and so a fulfilment in the actual life of true
Christians of the account which He has inspired
men to give of them.

And thus, if we look at the Church of Christ as a
great educational institution, and such it really is,
every one who is a member of it has received, when
admitted into the body, obligations to educate and
train all whom he can, to seek Him Who is the Way,
the Truth, and the Life, and by the confession of the
Lord Jesus both with His lips and with His deeds,
to tell out to all whom he would thus educate that
He, the God Man, is the one Prophet, the one Priest,
the one King.

It is then in these obligations that we read the
meaning of the dignity to which all Christians are
called of being Prophets of the Lord.

Or, again, when we meet with such an account of
Christians as that given by S. Peter, where he speaks
of believers “as a spiritual House, an Holy Priest-
hood,’ ’ and tells them that “ they are a chosen
generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
peculiar people,” we dare not empty these words of
the Holy Ghost of that definite meaning which the
Church has ever given to them.

No — we testify that all Christians are, as the Jews
were of old, “ a kingdom of Priests,” and are charged
with the high privilege of making that offering which

c 2

S. Paul calls cc the reasonable service,” and enjoy the
special prerogative of uniting their prayers, their in-
tercessions, and their giving of thanks, and their self
oblation, with the priestly acts which He “ Who is a
Priest for ever” is now discharging as our High
Priest and sacrifice before the Throne of God.

When the Christian says “ Through Jesus Christ
our Lord,” he is, in his own case, as a member of
the Christian Priesthood, giving proof of the truth
of the saying “ The Scripture cannot be broken.”

So, too, when the Christian child seeks from his
father his blessing, he is recognising the great
verity, that there rests upon his parent a shadow of
Christ’s sacerdotal majesty, and the father, remem-
bering that some such prerogative has been ever
attached to the relation in which a parent stands to
his child, and believing that it is a remnant of that
image in which man was created, and a foreshadow-
ing of man’s more than restoration to his first state
by his re-creation in the second Adam, gives his
child the boon he seeks, in the full assurance that
the high functions which he as a father, is privileged
to exercise on earth, will be confirmed and sanctioned
in Heaven ; and that in laying on his hands to bless
his child, he is acting as an ordained steward of the
Lord to dispense to that child the riches of His
goodness.

But perhaps there is no act of the Christian,
which more clearly expounds the fact, and gives the
true meaning of his vocation and ordination to the
Priesthood of the Lord, than the ancient custom,

still existing in some churches, of the people and the
Priest making confession to one another, and re-
ceiving from one another, under the precatory form,
the blessing of absolution.

And this Priesthood of all Believers is moreover a
Royal one. This further “ honour have all His
saints.” They are those for whom a crown of
righteousness and a crown of glory have been pre-
pared ; and the victory and the dominion which
they are ever gaining over the powers of darkness,
by the power and Spirit of Him Who is King of
kings, and which is shewn in their lives and tempers
and whole conversation exemplifies again the truth
of the saying, “ The Scripture cannot be broken.”

Whilst, however, I would have you entirely, and
without any reserve, accept and insist upon
that interpretation of the words of Holy these offices,

A d e.g.. Apostles.

Scripture, which gives the most distinct
and definite meaning to its witness with regard to
the Prophetical, Priestly, and Royal functions and
prerogatives of all Christians, I would also urge upon
you the same motive of godly fear with regard to
other parts of God’s revelation.

The Christian Church is in part, and as a matter
of historical fact, the continuation and development
of the Jewish Church.

If the Epistle to the Galatians teaches us that in
the letter the ordinances of Judaism were done away
by being fulfilled in Christ, the Epistle to the
Hebrews suggests that they were still “ shadows of
good things to come.”

And the fact that the shadows, — the types — the
symbols have been taken up and transmuted into
substance, and sure means, and instruments, and
channels of the grace of the Holy Spirit, does not
contradict, but only expound this statement.

I remind you of this, because it has as a precedent
a very material bearing upon the next Truth, which
I am about to place before you.

This Truth is, that there is another way besides the
one I have just stated, in which our Lord is repre-
sented in the functions of His three offices by His
Church on earth, and in which other way His all-
sufficient ministrations do, by their infinite merit and
value, make real and effectual the ministrations of
men.

The reason why all Christians have the preroga-
tives, of which I was just now • speaking, is this.
They are parts of that Body which is “ Christ’s ful-
ness.” They have been placed by the Holy Ghost in
real relations to Him, Who is Prophet, Priest, and
King, and as being one with Him, they have been
anointed with the unction of the Holy One to pro-
phesy, to sacrifice, to rule.

But, as in the case of Israel, this Body of Christ
has certain definite members through whom, as
through organs, the Head of the Body discharges
specially His functions, and through whom also the
other members are represented.

Whilst I recognise with all the frankness, caused
by the fear of “ breaking the Scripture,” the pro-
phetical, Sacerdotal, and Regal functions of all

believers, I maintain, under the sanction of the same
fear of not faithfully exhibiting the truth of Scripture,
that there were those in the first days of the Gospel
Kingdom, who had received in a very special, and
peculiar way from the one Prophet — the one Priest —
the one King — special powers of teaching, sacrificing,
and ruling.

S. Paul helps to place this Truth in distinct relief,
when in writing to the Corinthians, he says that the
Body of which our Lord is the Head, and which he
calls 64 Christ,” is organised like the body of man,
and that as the human body has distinct members
and senses, so the spiritual body has its different
instruments, by which the Divine Spirit, which is its
life, and its central power, puts forth that Life and
executes His will, — and that the well-being of the
whole body depends on the healthy actings of every
part of this mysterious organism.

It is the whole body which possesses those vital
principles which reach out to, and come in contact
with things external to the body ; but it is through
particular organs by which these vital principles thus
act, and it is through the healthy functions of such
organs that the whole body receives from the Giver
of all good the increase of its own life and power.

And, before S. Paul, our blessed Lord had told
His Apostles that they would have the highest rank
in His kingdom, and would, for its well-being, be in-
vested with royal and sacerdotal dignity and honour.
“ I appoint unto you (are our Lord’s words to His
Apostles) a kingdom, as my Father has appointed

unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes
of Israel;” those tribes, He meant, which consisted
both of the old stock of Israel, and also of the Gen-
tile boughs, which were to be engrafted into that
ancient stock.

But this use of men as “ fellow workers with
God,” as instruments for applying to men the bles-
sings attached to the Prophetical, Priestly, and
Eegal functions of the GoD-Man was not confined to
the Apostles.

The Powers committed to the Apostles were
Also their transmitted by the Apostles, in the name
Successors. an(} piace 0f their Lord, to other men, and
the manner in which this was done, was by taking
up into the system of the Christian Church a well
known rite of the Jewish Church.

In that church any ordained transference, such as
the substitution of the victim for the offerer, had
been always made by the laying on of hands, and
the Apostles ordained their successors by the same
outward means.

In making this statement I do not forget
scruples on this that, as I have already admitted, it is
subject. Very possible to arouse a feeling of godly
jealousy, lest a claim should be made for man, which
is inconsistent with the prerogatives of the one
Mediator — lest the investing man with any powers
derived from, and representing the Prophetical,
Sacerdotal, and Eegal offices of Jesus Christ should
be an encroachment on forbidden ground.

Of course the true way to meet and remove such
a scruple is to appeal to God’s Word, and to use as a
trustworthy exponent of it, the history of the Pri-
mitive Church.

We can hardly err, my Brethren, in guiding our
estimate of the true meaning, and drift of Scripture
by the verdict of that early Christendom, which did,
in fact, tacitly or expressly decide what was the area,
and authority of the Canon of Scripture; and for
a proof of this I may refer to Mr. Westcott’s ad-
mirable “ History of the Canon of the New Testa-
ment.”

But such an appeal to recorded facts is often
denied a fair and candid hearing through the pre-
occupation of the mind and heart of the man to
whom it is addressed by a priori objections.

It is, therefore, well to know what these objections
are, and then to anticipate the allegation A priori objec.

p , i -i * “| tions and so

oi them, and provide answers to them. scruples met.

This I will now do.

For example — One objection which has been raised
to the claims I have made for the Ministry of the
Church, is that the existence of so privileged an
agency is inconsistent with the position of our Lord
as the one Mediator.

But the force of such an objection is greatly
weakened (to say the least of it) by the fact that the
Apostles are allowed to have exercised these very
prerogatives, and that they whose claims are thus
not disputed, were themselves but men like those
who came after them.

Another objection to these claims rests on a dis-
tinction of a different kind between the apostles and
those who have since them been called to the
Ministry of the Church. It is said that the foriner
had the power of working miracles, and that the
latter have not had it. But three answers may be
given to this objection.

(1.) Whether any post- Apostolic miracles are or
are not bond fide miracles is a question of fact upon
which my limits do not allow me to enter. But this
at least I will say, that Scripture no where contains
any the slightest intimation, that the power of working
miracles would cease with the lifetime of the Apostles
of Christ. And if this be the case, the assumption
that the successors of the Apostles do not possess
such a power, lacks all Scriptural authority.

If miracles are not worked among us, this would
be sufficiently accounted for now no less than
eighteen centuries ago, by a want of faith in the one
invisible Miracle-worker.

(2.) Or, if we admit the premiss, namely, that the
power of working miracles has been withdrawn, we
may still fairly deny that the withholding of such
a gift involves any conclusion about the discharge
of the ordinary functions of the Ministry, and we
may justify the not placing the two powers in the
same category, by urging that miracles were clearly
an exceptional as distinct from an ordinary power of
the Apostolate itself; and that thus in any pre-
ordained change in the trust committed to the
ministers of Christ the ordinary powers might have

been exempted from the change made in the excep-
tional ones.

(3.) The third answer to the objection is that it
proves too much. They who would set aside the high
claims of the Christian Ministry to represent the one
Prophet, Priest, and King, and with this view allege
that the same fiat of God’s will, by which the power to
work miracles was withdrawn, included the with-
drawal of those other prerogatives, should remember
that such a conclusion would equally involve the
powers of preaching the Gospel ; that it was when our
Lord commissioned the Eleven “to go into all the
world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” that
He declared that signs should accompany and so
warrant such teaching, and that the casting out
devils, and speaking with new tongues, and laying
hands on the sick for their recovery, should evidence
His blessing on their ministration of His word.

Nor can the scruple about these alleged preroga-
tives of the Clergy, as successors of the Apostles,
find for itself a securer footing in another distinction
which certainly exists, and on which great stress has
been laid, between the Apostles and those who now
minister in the Church.

This distinction is the greater conformity of the
Apostles to our Lord, and so their higher claims
upon the minds and hearts of those to whom they
ministered.

But you cannot make from it premises, Out of

a See Revision of Book of Common Prayer, by J. C. Fisher, M.A.,
2nd Edit. p. 56.

which you can draw the conclusion you require, or
rather out of which you will not be forced to draw
the contradictory one ; for such greater nearness of
the Apostles to their Lord would only increase the
risk (if any) of confounding their prerogatives with
the prerogatives of Him Who is God.

The fact is that if we recognise the justice of this
scruple, about which I am speaking, we must allow
that it reaches to the prerogatives of the Apostolate ;
and such an admission ought at once to prove that,
however natural and excusable it may be, it is not
rooted and grounded in the truth.

Or rather I would crush it at once, by reminding
E . u you that this principle so questioned is not

Doctnnehof the only enshrined in the whole ministry of the
incarnation, and enforced in the

doctrine which expounds the greatest of all mysteries,
the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the delegation
to Him as the GoD-Man, from the Father, of the
autocratic powers and prerogatives of the Godhead.

Nor am I obliged to look to the supernatural
And through a order only for a precedent, but can find

fact in natural ,

order. 0ne m the natural order which may well
disturb and displace any such a priori difficulties.

He Who is the alone Author and Creator of all
things does not by separate acts of creation give
being and life to those creatures, which are to be
brought forth, but employs His living creatures thus
to give effect to His will and pleasure, and as His
agents to be the means of communicating life. Or,
as has been well said, “ The universal power of

reproduction and increase is but tbe energy of the
Creator’s hand working through creature instru-
ments.”21 And thus he who would escape from
scruples and difficulties cannot do a wiser thing than
to seek wisdom from the study of the mysteries
which are placed around him, and some of which
envelop his very being.

As to the objection to the Priestly Commission
which is drawn from the danger of its abuse, I would
only observe that the intention of the delegation is
the carrying forward towards its ultimate end that
eternal purpose of our God, to which He gave effect
in the economy of the Incarnation.

The ministry was ordained as a help to the joy of
believers, and if, through man’s pride and selfishness,
it becomes a tyranny, all that is proved by this
terrible contravention of His mind Whose commission
it claims to have, is that, like everything else in this
world, even the very Word of God, it is in its use
subject to corruption.

The trust has not the less been created and com-
mitted to man, because they who have been called to
its duties and privileges, have, at particular times
and places, disregarded its objects, and abused it to
their own evil purposes.

But, even if such a priori objections could not be
so satisfactorily answered, as I am persuaded Historical
they can be, they still could not disturb the iSllgltfon^f
historical evidence on which such claims
mainly rest. It is certain that there has been from

Rev. W. J. Edge, Sermons on Second Adam, p. 22.

the first such a ministry with delegated powers.
The Pastoral Epistles alone furnish a sufficient evi-
dence as to the mind of the Apostolic Age. From
the first the GoD-Man has had in His Body, the
Church, certain opyava, instrumental agents, and
He has used this organism to apply to the minds
and hearts of His redeemed people those medicines
and -healing balms of the Gospel which are His as the
one and only Mediator between God and man.

And what are the precise functions which the
what these records of the life and conscience and in-
Functions are. tei;[0Ct 0f the Church witness have been the
inheritance of the ministry of the Gospel ?

These functions relate to the ministration of the
Word and Sacraments, and are the functions of the
representatives of the one Prophet, the one Priest,
the one King.

How, with regard to those instruments which our

Pnestiy Lord employs to discharge in His place His
Functions, prophetical and regal functions, I do not
purpose saying anything, but shall at once proceed to
define what is the relation in which the Clergy stand
as the Ministers of Christ to Him, Who is the one
Priest, and to exemplify their fulfilment of this rela-
tion in their ministrations at the celebration of the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and in their dealings
with sinners : and in doing so I shall make no claim
for them, as I have said before, except such as the
conscience and intellect of the Church have ever
recognised as the expression of God’s mind con-
cerning them.

I say this emphatically with regard to their rights
and dignities at the celebration of the Sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper, whether we are viewing that
Sacrament as a Sacrifice or a Feast.

I speak of that Sacrament as a Sacrifice. The sacrament

-*• of Lord’s Supper

When we use this word with regard to aSacnfice*
our blessed Lord, we are using a word with which
every one who knows the Old Testament is very
familiar.

There we find that God was pleased to direct
certain acts of offering, or of presenting an oblation.

The creatures offered might be different ; it might
be such an offering as Melchizedek made, namely,
“ bread and wine,” or what was prescribed by the
Law, whether fine flour, and bread or cakes of un-
leavened bread mingled with oil, or sheep, or oxen.

But if • the creatures offered might be different,
there was one thing which must be the same in
every sacrifice, and that is the state of the mind and
heart of him who made the oblation whatever it was.
Every one who offered must sacrifice to God his will,
his best affections, his being, every power he had of
reverent adoring worship and thanksgiving.

And this account of sacrifice holds the sacrifice of
our blessed Lord, and suggests to us when it began
and how it was perfected, and is now continued.

When He gave His person at His incarnation for
the salvation of men He was making His one obla-
tion of Himself.

And so when He signified, in the breaking of
bread and pouring out the wine at the last supper,

His entire surrender of Himself to His Father’s plea-
sure, He was, as the great High Priest, offering
Himself, with the consent of His whole inward being,
for the sins of men.

And so, when His agony and bloody sweat, and
the sufferings of His bitter cross were “ finished,”
He was not only “ the Lamb slain from the founda-
tion of the world,” but the Priest Who sacrificed it.

And so too, when after His resurrection He had
returned to His former glory, He still continued to
present before the Mercy Seat, in His own glorified
but once crucified body, that perfect sacrifice which
He once offered on the Cross. Having as the great
Antetype, to Whom the action of the Levitical Priest,
not less than the sacrifice of the legal victim, pointed,
offered Himself as the victim, He appeared in the
presence of God for us, and thus fulfilled that other
typical function of the Priest, namely, His sprinkling
the blood within the Holy of Holies.

And thus it is, my Brethren, that if you now look
within the veil of the Sanctuary, you may discern
there with the eye and the ear of faith our Lord’s
perpetual Ministrations, that unbroken commemora-
tion of His finished work, the power of which endures
for evermore.

Moreover, as our Lord by this commemoration of
His one sacrifice, which was perfected on the Cross,
exercises His functions as the great High Priest of
His Church, and through such functions, such
sacrificial actions, such intercessory pleadings,
applies the fruits of that one Sacrifice to believers

separately, so too they who, in obedience to His
charge, “ Do this in remembrance of me,”a ever com-
memorate His Death and Sacrifice in the breaking of
bread, do thus act as Priests, and exhibit in their
celebrations of the Eucharist, for the glory of God
and the good of the redeemed, their delegation to
the duties and the dignities, and the ministrations of
the Priesthood of Jesus Christ.

But on this last point I must enter into more exact
and detailed particulars. I would state, my Brethren,
and justify everything said or done in the transaction
of this tremendous mystery, by us the Clergy, in the
Name of the Lord.

When we are about thus, in obedience to our Lord’s
command, to break bread in remembrance TheConsecration
of Him, we take of the fruits of the earth, ofit-
the elements of bread and wine, and offer some
small portions of these elements to our God in
acknowledgment that He is Lord over all, and that
all which man enjoys is by right His, Who is the
author and giver of them all.

We then consecrate this oblation of bread and
wine. As our Lord’s representatives, and so in the
Person of Christ putting forth some of His delegated
powers, and by His own words, we bless the elements,
or rather He blesses them through us.

Through such blessing the oblation becomes a
Sacrament, and as such has not only an outward, but
an inward part.

a note?j/ in Alexandrian Greek and in Homeric Greek mean
to sacrifice. See Appendix, p. 165.

The outward part, the bread and wine, remains in
its appearance, form, and essence, or substance, what
it was before the act of consecration, but still by
consecration it has been made the veil and channel of
an ineffable mystery.

The inward part is That which Our Blessed Lord
took from the Blessed Virgin — which He offered to
God as an atoning sacrifice on the Cross — which
the Almighty Father has glorified, has, that is,
endowed, “ not with the actual properties, but with
the supernatural gifts, graces, and effects of God-
head/’ and out of which wells forth every blessing
of the Hew Covenant.

The inward part of the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper is Christ’s precious body and blood, and so,
by virtue of the Hypostatic Union, Christ Himself.

But here observe, my Brethren, a distinction which
I must make. This inward part of the Sacrament,
this presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, and
of Christ Himself, is not after the manner or laws
of a body, according to which ordinary laws our
Lord’s Body is in Heaven only; but is a super-
natural, heavenly, invisible, incomprehensible, and
spiritual presence.

It is, in fact, the presence (to use the language of
one of our Homilies), not of a carnal, but of a
ghostly substance ; or to state the doctrine in the
language of S. Augustine, whose triple distinction
is necessarily so familiar to every catechumen of the
Church, it is the presence not merely of the virtus,
but of the res Sacramenti. It is “the body and
blood of Christ.”

Such, my Brethren, is the effect of Christ’s con-
secration of the elements through the action of His
ministers. The gifts receive an inward part, even
the presence of the “ Res Sacramenti,” the body and
blood of Christ.

And here I would say that unless the consecration
prayer be admitted to have this its historical force,
as the central feature of the Eucharistic Service — as
the sacramental action which is introductory of,
Our Lord’s most gracious gift, it must be pro-
nounced a senseless unreality, which darkens the
most solemn act of the human soul in its communion
with God.

But this consecration of the gifts stands in closest
relation to another great function.

That sacrificial action, which is the counterpart of
Christ’s perpetual pleading and presenta-

• n xx* -| ill* The oblation.

tion of His body and blood m our behalf,
is consummated when the bread and wine are made
the Sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood. In
this the Eastern and the Western Church are agreed.

And it is this special action which gives its true
interpretation to the tovto ttoieits eig r/jv t jjlt\v avafxvt]cnv,a
and this in two ways — it is a giving a memorial
witness to man, and it is, in accordance with other
ordained memorial acts, an using of a jiv^fioGwov in
pleading with God.

In the Holy Communion men and angels have set
before them a vivid representation of Christ’s death

a S. Luke xxii. 19.
D 2

upon the cross, and so the remembrance of Him,
now invisible, is quickened and sustained by the Holy
Spirit through the senses to which such an image3 of
Our Lord’s death is presented.

But Our Lord’s words hold more than this. The
words are most remarkable ones. The original
words, of which “ Do this” is the translation, mean
in Alexandrine Greek “ sacrifice this,” and the other
word avafxvr)GiQ is also a sacrificial word, and signifies
the offering of a fivr\fx6avvov .

How, it is easy to understand how the offering a
The nvrj/ioa wov may be useful to man, but it

nvi lfiiawov. does not sight seem to have any

place in our worship of God.

And yet it is true that God condescends to place
Himself even in this respect on the level with man.

The testimony of the Word of God is most
distinct on this matter.

Thus the rainbow was not only a sign to man of
God’s covenant of mercy with Noah, but it was His
iJLvrifioGw ov according to His own Revelation, when
He said “ I will look upon it (the bow), that I may
remember the everlasting covenant between God, and
every living creature of all flesh that is upon the
earth.”b

Thus, again, circumcision was the sign and token
of the covenant with Abraham, and the blood of
sacrifice was the great instrument of the Mosaic
covenant, the sign not only to man but also to God,

R Heb. x. 1.

b Gen. ix. l(i.

the remembrance of its benefits, and obligations to
both parties of the covenant.

And with such a revelation of God’s condescension
towards His people, surely instead of our being sur-
prised at being told that God is willing to be re-
minded of what His Son has done for us men and for
our salvation, it should seem to us to be only accord-
ing to the analogy of faith that our Lord should in
His own Person ever present the sacrifice — that
which was once for all offered up to God as a sacri-
fice for ever, and that His representatives here on
earth should also plead, a in a way appointed by
Himself, that same Sacrifice, which the Great
Mediator evermore pleadeth in Heaven.

But our Lord had also other purposes in instituting
and ordaining this Sacrament. He provided The Feast on
in it for his disciples that heavenly food, by the Sacrifice-
which alone they could do His work, and attain the
ends of His entire surrender of His will to God, and
of His Death upon the Cross.

As in that ancient typical rite of the Jewish
Church, the ordinance of the Passover, there was
both a sacrifice and a feast on the sacrifice, so in the
Christian Church there is an ordinance in which both
these typical parts of the Jewish Passover are
fulfilled.

Christians keep a feast where they strengthen and
refresh their souls on that which is presented to God,
in commemoration of His Son’s atoning work, namely,

a The word used, I am told, in S. Wales to designate the second
order of the Ministry is offeiriad, i.e., an offerer.

the res Sacramenti, the precious Body and precious
Blood, whereby we are made one with Christ, and
Christ with us.

And thus the man who has been commissioned by
the one Priest to be a 44 fellow- worker with Him,”
not only pleads on earth what His Saviour is pleading
in heaven, but also, by Christ’s Ordinance com-
mitted to him, provides for brother men 44 a banquet
of most heavenly food.”

But it has been further ordained that the guests at

The that banquet must be clothed in marriage
judicial Power. garments, and that no one but he whose
soul reaches out the hand of faith can assimilate
such food ; or, rather, that every one else will to his
own infinite loss, and the dishonour of his God 44 be
guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord;” and the
same men who are commissioned to provide the
supper are entrusted with the charge of excluding
those who are not clothed in that 44 white raiment,
which is the righteousness of the Saints.”

It is for this very purpose that our Lord has com-
mitted to these stewards of His mysteries those
judicial functions, which are often described as the
Power of the Keys.

The mean 44 whereby the Body of Christ is received
and eaten in the supper is faith,” that faith which
confesses Christ, that faith which so permeates the
whole spiritual being of the Christian, that you may
see in the mirror of his life and conversation the very
likeness of his Lord ; and it is one of the official
duties of the Priesthood of the Church to admit or

to exclude those who receive the invitation to come
to that heavenly feast. They are, for example, the
instruments of the Lord, for giving effect to that
warning which reaches throughout all time, “ If thou
bringest thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest
that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there
thy gift before the altar, go and first be reconciled to
thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

The ways by which these Ministers of Christ thus
guard the sacred treasure committed to

Its exercise.

their charge, and train souls to be partakers
of these riches of God’s goodness, are various, but
the power which is thus exercised is the same.

Our Lord had in some of His parables, as for
example in those of the Wheat and the Tares, the
Wise and the Foolish Virgins, the Vine and its
Unfruitful Branches, and the Net which caught bad
as well as good fish, foreshadowed the mixture of
evil and good in the Church.

But though His words were soon partially fulfilled,
there is no question that there were fewer difficulties
in the early days of the Church in exercising
discipline than there were afterwards, when the lines
became less distinct which separated the Church and
the world.

And in those early days the dealing of Christ’s
Ministers with sinners was more public.

But afterwards, when faith became enfeebled by
closer contact with the world, the rules about public
discipline became relaxed, and out of consideration
for sinners, and to remove stumbling blocks in the

way of their turning to God, the Clergy were allowed
to exercise those same powers by which they had
ministered the public discipline of the Church, in
private.

The main conditions, however, under which they
Main conditions acted in this matter for their Lord were

of public and

priTetmieplinethe same.

Thus they were to take care that persons to whom
they ministered did not confound their delegated
powers with the autocratic powers of Him, Who
alone could absolve from sin, namely, God ; and so
they were bound to testify with S. Ambrose,
“ Manus Spiritus Sancti est officium Sacerdotis : jus
autem Spiritus Sancti in solvendis, ligandisque
criminibus est. Omnia dedit Christus discipulis suis ;
sed nulla in his hominis potestas est, ubi divini
muneris gratia viget.,,a

Next they were to bear witness with all possible
distinctness that none but the truly penitent benefited
by this ministration, and that to make this condition
the more distinct they were to apply tests to the
minds and hearts of those who professed to be
penitent, and so to act as upright, well-informed,
responsible judges in this matter, always bearing in
mind that “ Clavis potestatis nihil operatur sine clave
sciential ”b

Next they were to proclaim that the same condi-
tions attached to the bindings, as to the loosings
of the Church, that God would only ratify those

a S. Ambrose de Penitentia, cap. 2 and 8.
b Theophilus Anglicanus, cap. xiii. xiv.

sentences, and confirm those exercises of delegated
power, which approved themelves to His all-seeing,
all-merciful, all-just judgment.

And lastly, in those days when the fact of such de-
legation by our Lord to others of powers, which were
His as the one Priest and King, was not questioned,
the application to individual cases of these spiritual
benefits — these relaxations of the bonds of Satan —
was generally associated with prayer, and so was
made in either the declaratory, or the precatory, or
the optative form.

Such, my Brethren, is, I believe, the doctrine of
Christ about the Priestly powers of the Recapitulation.
Apostles and those whom they sent forth, even as
they themselves had been sent forth by the Lord.

I assert that the Apostles, and those who have
received the commission from them, have ministra-
tions entrusted to them, through which the bread
and wine become at Holy Communion the Body and
Blood of Christ, and the Church presents before the
Throne of Grace that which is present, viz., Christ’s
Body and Blood in the Sacrament, and by such
offering pleads with Christ and through Christ with
the Father; or in other words gives in her highest
act of worship, and praise, and adoration, expression
to the full meaning of those words with which we
ever close our prayers, whether supplications for
ourselves or intercessions for others, “ through Jesus
Christ our Lord.”

I also maintain that the Apostles, and they who
have come after them through their appointment,

have power entrusted to them to make sinners par-
takers of the mercies of God in Christ, and that
they use this power in ministering the Word of God,
and the two Sacraments, and by loosing them in the
ordinance of absolution from the bonds by which
they have been held.

But I also set against these claims, and to coun-
teract all mistakes about them, though I

A Disclaimer. .

am almost ashamed of doing so, the most
emphatic disclaimer of justifying any plea which can
possibly interfere with the autocratic power of God ;
and I entreat you all, so as to guard you against
making or receiving any rash charges, to remember
that the instrumentality of man, which God has been
pleased to take up into and to employ in the super-
natural order, had been already consecrated in the
operations of the natural order, and that if the fear
of abuse is to empty God’s words of their literal and
historical meaning, the same caution must close the
mouth of every preacher of the Gospel, lest he should
be found at the great day to have incurred in his
soul the awful guiltr of placing any natural or super-
natural gifts, which have been vouchsafed to him, in
the balance against the inspirations and the persua-
sions of the one Teacher, the Holy Ghost.

But I shall not content myself with only making
this protest against misrepresentation.

There are times for speaking and times for silence,
times to pass by attacks on, and derogations of the
truth, and times to be outspoken in its defence.

In my opinion the time has come, at any rate in

this Diocese, for the latter course, and I have with-
out any mental reservation, God knoweth, acted
upon this conviction.

Thus in giving effect to it I have borne my testi-
mony, that you, my Rev. Brethren, who have been
ordained by the Holy Ghost, through the instru-
mentality of men, to the Priesthood of the Church,
and have received Divine mission and grace to dis-
charge the functions of the office, and to do the
work of a Priest in the House of God, which is His
Church, have been commissioned to dispense the
Word of God — to celebrate the Eucharistic feast and
sacrifice, and 44 to loose by His authority the bands
of wickedness and to let the oppressed go free.”

I have recalled to your minds that the effect of
your blessing the elements is that there becomes
a real presence of the Lord’s Body and Blood in
the Sacrament, and I have also reminded you that
(as is most natural) you are to call to the remem-
brance of your God, even as your Saviour is doing in
Heaven, by pleading His precious Body and Blood,
the New Covenant which He has made with man.

Nor do I now say, “as is most natural,” un-
advisedly— for it seems to me that every one, who is
enabled to receive the doctrine held in the Apostolical3
and literal meaning of our Lord’s own words, “ This
is my Body, this is my Blood,” will almost instinc-
tively pass on to unite himself to the intercessory,
mediatorial action of our Lord, as the One Priest in

a See Appendix, p. 143.

Heaven — and that nothing less than a direct autho-
ritative prohibition can set him free from the con-
straint of this instinctive claim upon his faith.

That his faith has had its trials and difficulties
before this last claim is made upon it, I of course
admit most fully.

And yet how much God has provided by way of
Helps to receive preparing the mind and heart to receive all

the Testimony

or the church, doctrine, and so to accept the clear

testimony of the undivided Church !

I will mention some of the facts I here specially
allude to.

I claim for you a Divine mission from our Lord
Jesus Christ through His Apostles and their suc-
cessors, and when I do so, I remember that the
Jewish Priesthood illustrated the principle contained
in those words of the great Apostle, “ No man taketh
this honour unto himself, but he that was called of
God as was Aaron, 5 5a and I am helped by this fact to
receive the doctrine, as the true exposition of Holy
Scripture, that your ministry, as it far “ exceeds in
glory5 5 that which went before it, being not “the
ministration of condemnation but of righteousness, 5 5b
cannot have a less definite authority marked upon it
by an unbroken succession0 than that which was
merely its “ shadow.5 5d

When I speak of you as Priests as well as Pastors,
I recognise in the Christian Church the old Church,
raised by the Incarnation and its fruits to a far

a Hebrews v. 4. b 2 Cor. iii. 9. c See Appendix, pp. 144, 145.
d Heb. x. 1.

nobler condition, and all its prerogatives and duties,
now entrusted by the Spirit of God to a new succession
of ministers — and I see evidence of this recognised
connexion between the old Dispensation and the new
in the continuance1 of the Apostles in the Temple
after our Lord’s Ascension, and so partaking, during
that transitional period, of its sacrificial worship, and
also in their not hastening to assume the name, by
which the ministers of God under the Jewish dispen-
sation were designated, till the destruction of the
city and the Temple testified that the Christian
Priesthood was substituted for the Jewish.

Nor will you doubt, my Rev. Brethren, that it was
soon admitted that such a substitution had taken
place, when I recall to your minds that Eusebiusb
reports, on the authority of Poly crates, that John,
the beloved disciple, assumed, as Bishop of Ephesus,
the mitre plate which distinguished the Aaronicc
Priesthood, and that Epiphanius tells us that James,
as Bishop of Jerusalem, did the same.

You will find, also, in expounding to your people
the Doctrine of Christ about His Sacraments, that
God has, in the riches of His goodness, provided
you very great help to take out of the way of your
people’s faith a very special stumbling block.

That stumbling block is the doubt how matter can
be used for a spiritual purpose.

But you may remove that doubt by reminding

a S. Luke xxiv. 53 ; Acts ii. 46, v. 42.
b Eusebius v. 24, and Valesius’ notes.

0 Exod. xxiv. 6 ; Lev. viii. 9.

them that matter has been united with the Godhead
in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that,
since it was thus consecrated, it has become no unfit
instrument for communicating spiritual blessings.

And not only so, but when you have thus stimu-
lated their minds to realise somewhat of the mystery
of the great doctrine they implicitly confess, you may
further place them within the sight of that miracle
of healing, when the eyes of the blind man were
opened with clay and spittle, or rather by the
Almighty hand of the Son of God, through the
instrumentality of part of His creation; and then
you may confidently hope that your brethren will not
close the doors of their minds and hearts against
your teaching on this subject.

And should you require more aid in this Ministra-
tion, I can at once supply you with it.

Model your own address to them on the words of
The Eishop of one of our greatest divines, whom God
Exeter’sWitness. gome years ago called to the very front of

the great struggles for His Truth, and has still spared
to His Church ; or rather borrow the very words,
without the minutest alteration, of that great Bishop,
the Bishop of Exeter, and let him in his old age still
teach your flock the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
Say to them, in his words of a glowing faith,3
“In the Eucharist, as a sacrament, we eat our
ransom, as S. Augustine says — we receive spiritually
c the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given
for us,’ c His Blood which was shed for us in the

a Bishop of Exeter’s Pastoral Letter, 1861, p. 55.

same Eucharist as a sacrifice, we, in representation,
plead the one great sacrifice which our great High
Priest continually presenteth for us in heaven. In
heaven He presenteth ever before the Father, in
Person, Himself, mediating with the Father, as our
Intercessor ; on earth He invisibly sanctifies what is
offered, and makes the earthly elements, which we
offer, to be sacramentally and ineffably — but not in a
carnal way — His Body and Blood. For although
once for all offered, that sacrifice, be it remembered,
is ever living and continuous — made to be continuous
by the resurrection of our Lord. Accordingly, S.
John tells us in Rev. v. 6 — 12, that he c beheld, and
lo, in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb as it had
been slain,’ and to Him is continually addressed the
triumphant song of the heavenly host, ‘Worthy is
the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches,
and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory,
and blessing.’ To Him His Church on earth, in the
Eucharistic service, in like manner, continually cries
‘ 0 Lobd God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that
takest away the sins of the world’ — not that tookest
away, but still takest — e Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata
mundi.’ As then the sacrifice is continuous, its
propitiatory virtue is continuous, and the fulness of the
propitiation is pleaded for the whole Church where-
soever the commemoration of it is exhibited in the
Holy Eucharist.”

With regard to the other great doctrine, viz., that
which expounds the ministerial powers of the Priest-
hood of Jesus Christ in retaining or remitting sins,

I would here add, first, that I have not forgotten
that it is one that stirs up great opposition; and,
secondly, that the very persons who object to its
formal statement and claims, do often really accept
it and act upon it, and that they do so because it
contemplates and meets states of heart which are
common to us all.

Some who oppose it, do so on the grounds of the
great abuses which have arisen in connexion with it,
especially when absolution is given in the indicative
form, and is a judicial act. But I would again remind
all such, that if they allow to abuse the power of
annulling any ordinance of God, I know not what
they will retain, certainly not the two Sacraments,
certainly not public or private ministrations of the
Word of God, certainly not an open Bible.

And to all who set themselves against it, I would
further submit that the real question is of the em-
ployment by God of men, as instruments in binding
and loosing, and not of the mode in which they
execute their duties, and so make prayer the accom-
paniment of their functions — that the act must be a
judicial one, to avoid the guilt of sacrilege either in
him who seeks the gift or in him who professes to
minister it in the name of the Lord — yea, that if
there is no special exercise of power, or authority in
the execution of this function, whether in the decla-
rative, or the precatory, or the optative, or the in-
dicative form, it is a function, to use again words of
the Bishop of Exeter, “ within the competence of
every Christian.”3

a See Appendix, p. 150.

Others, who are scandalised by the claim made
for private discipline, admit that the Church has the
power of discipline, and can punish sinners ; but only,
they add, in this world “ that their souls may be saved
in the day of the Lord.” But surely this is making
a distinction without a difference.

Exclusion from the Church is a binding of the
man ; or (to use the words of St. Paul about his
own act) it is “ a delivering the man unto Satan.’ ’a
And the mistake may be traced up to an erroneous
conception of what that body is, from which the
man is thus excluded ; and it has been, in part, to
protest against this error that I have said so much
to you to-day about the Church.

As long as a man thinks of the Church as a mere
human association — a club, so to speak, of followers
of a departed master — I understand how easily he
can strip exclusion from it of much of its awful
and mysterious consequences ; but when he gains
a more exact knowledge of its being, and defines, in
his own innermost and truest thoughts, the Church
on earth to be the antechamber, so to speak, of
the Heavenly Court, the visible fragment of that
Body, the rest of which is invisible, I am confident
that the admission of public discipline will carry
with it over all objections the principle of private
discipline, and constrain him, who may hitherto have
objected to the principle as well as to the practice of
private discipline, to justify both the principle and
its application under some possible circumstances.

a 1 Tim. i. 20.

I distinguish here, you will observe, between the
principle and the practice of private confession and
absolution, because I entirely believe that the ques-
tion is really one of changeable discipline, and that the
Church, whilst fully recognising the principle, may
be guided by the Spirit of Truth, to restrain, owing
to peculiar circumstances, the practice within the
narrowest limits.

I will say no more on this point here, as I shall be
forced in the course of my argument to return to it.

But I stated that many persons who controverted
the Doctrine did, in fact, believe and act upon it,
and that they did so because this ordinance rests
upon the facts of our common nature.

One of the wants of our common nature is ex-
pressed by the demand made by every heart for an
object of trust and confidence, and the ministrations
of sympathy.

Every heart feels that its secret is a heavy burden,
and thankfully hears St. Paul’s injunction to other
hearts “ Bear ye one another’s burdens.”

Every heart, also, whether in sorrow or in joy,
wishes to have others sharers of its state. There is
“ a silver link and a silken tie” which binds heart to
heart and mind to mind, and this is the bond of
human sympathy.

Another want of our common nature is, that
of some help to guide us and direct us in our
endeavours to restrain that power of concupiscence,
which is alluded to in those words of the poet —
“Video meliora proboque,

Deteriora sequor.”

And it was the counsel of Senecaa (with a view to
this) to seek in this struggle the aid of one whose
life confirms his doctrine, who not only tells you what
you must do, hut himself does the same.

Now, in this ordinance our blessed Lord has
provided an answer to these demands. He has taken
up into the kingdom of the Incarnation the very
necessities of His creatures in the kingdom of nature,
and given an answer to their demand for confidence,
sympathy, and direction, in the very way which His
needy members require.

And having done so, His Holy Spirit, guiding men
into truth, leads them to seek and accept the gift which
the Saviour offers them.

But of these, who thus seem to accept the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, some do so with this most
remarkable reservation.

We will go, these objectors, of whom I am speaking,
would seem to say, to our brother men, and seek of
them those gifts which are Thine alone, 0 Lord, to
give, but we will not carry into their presence the
thought that they, whose ministrations we desire, are
but thine organs.

Strange it is, and yet most true, that if you divest
confession and absolution of that their specific cha-
racter, which seems to me to secure the honour of
God, and to protect His sole prerogatives both from
the assumption of His creatures, and from their
forgetfulness that they are but His instruments, you
will not uncommonly find amongst all religionists,

a Seneca, Ep. 52.

E 2

whether within or without the pale of the Church,
the enforcement and observance of this ordinance of
our holy religion.

And here I might next not only assure you, but pro-
I might appeal duce evidence that my assertion is correct,

to undivided

church, that I have in what I have said about
our Lord’s Incarnation, His Church, His Clergy, and
some of their functions, repeated the teaching of the
undivided Church.

But I shall not quote at length my authorities ;
first, because they have been so often set before us of
late by our present theologians ; and, secondly, because
I wish to employ the time, during which I may hope
to engage your attention, in placing before you other
considerations in support of what I have said.

In an address I lately received, sixty-four of my
Question of Clergy reminded me that “ it is the bounden
honesty raised, duty, before God and man, of every Clergy-
man who holds doctrines condemned by our Church,
to cease to minister in a Church in which he cannot
minister with fidelity to her principles.”

Now, the assertion of such a principle of conduct,
about which I should have thought all of us are so
entirely agreed, as to make it almost a truism, would
seem to hold an insinuation that some of us are dis-
honest enough consciously to contradict the teaching
of our Church, and yet for some motive or other
to hold offices in it.

I feel sure that they who signed the address did
not intend to lay such things to the charge of myself,
or any of my Brethren, but I think their words

certainly seem to bear this construction ; and as I am
thankful to believe that, if there is one thing more
hateful to an Englishman than another, it is dishonesty,
you must excuse my being, both for others and for
myself, somewhat sensitive about the right meaning
of the words I have quoted to you from that address.

I will, therefore, take this opportunity of declaring
that I do not agree with the advice lately given to
the members of a Scotch University by a philosopher,*
about the limits of an honest interpretation of the
articles and confessions of their Communion, and that
I trust that what I am about to say to you will
justify my disclaimer of any wish thus to narrow and
contract the claims of my conscience.

My purpose, then, now is to vindicate for such
^ doctrine as I have been expounding to you

might* alleged) the authority of our own branch of the
Catholic Church. Before, however, I enter
upon what may be considered the more special evidence
of this authority, I would remind you that the fact
that such teaching is the teaching of the antient
Fathers of the undivided Church has ever been
considered by our theologians as a sure testimony
to the orthodoxy of such teaching — a proof that it is
the very doctrine of the Church of England.

Thus it was the saying of a famous predecessor of
mine, Bishop Jewell, b “If any man alive were able to
prove any of these articles, by any one clear or plain

a Address to the University of S. Andrew, by J. S. Mill. M.P.,
p. 84.

b Jewell’s Works, Oxford, 1848, vi. 30.

clause or sentence, either of the Scriptures or of the
old Doctors , or of any old general council , or by any
example of the Primitive Church , I promised then
that I would give over and subscribe unto him/5

Again, the instructions3 given to the Savoy Commis-
sioners were “ to advise upon and review the said
Book of Common Prayer, comparing the same with
the most antient Liturgies which have been used in
the Church in the primitive and purest times.55

Again, our saintly Bishop Kenb thus professed his
faith : — “ As for my religion, I die in the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Faith professed by the whole
Church before the disunion of East and West.55

Again, it was no less a man than Bishop Wilsonc
who laid down this canon of Scripture interpretation :
— “ To understand the Holy Scriptures aright is to
understand them as the primitive Church did.55

But in disproval of such a charge of dishonesty,
much more, of course, may, and ought to he done,
than to appeal to the consentient teaching of Catholic
antiquity.

And it is this specific evidence which alone could
Evidence of our have justified us in answering at our ordina-

own Formularies, # .

as settled in 1662. Bon, as we must have done, that question —
“ Will you then give your faithful diligence always
so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the
Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded,

and as this Church and Realm hath received the
same '

a Cardwell’s Conferences, p. 300. b Bishop Ken’s Life, p. 309.
c Bishop Wilson’s Sacra Privata, p. 121.

Nor can there be any question where we are to look
for such evidence. It is, of course, to that settle-
ment of the faith and practice of the Church of
England, which took place a.d. 1662 ; and the
obligation under which you have put yourselves, (and
the words of which I have just quoted,) is to minister
the Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline then recog-
nised and sanctioned by the authority both of the
Church and State.

But before I call to your minds what this evidence
is, about the effect of Consecration by the , ^ ,

Priest — the Beal Presence — the Commemo- unSShese
rative Sacrifice, — and Absolution, I would Formulancs
remind you of three truths, which should ever be
present to the minds of those who are seeking to
know what is the teaching of their Formularies.

The one relates to the value of words. And here I
would say, that words represent things — that as there
is no more common, so there is no more frivolous and
dangerous error than to deny the power of words,
while we keep their form ; and that we should be very
careful, if we would honestly try to ascertain the mind
of our Church, not to bring to such an enquiry the
spirit of the Gnostics, or Arians, or Pelagians, or
Nestorians, or Paulicians, or Neologians, or Latitu-
dinarians, and so not to recognise the relation in
which words and things stand to one another.

The second point is, that the greatest care should
be taken to mark all changes of rule and expression,
however slight. Every one who would gain a true
conception of the present teaching of his Church,

must make a conscience of accurately investigating
what alterations were made in 1662, after the Savoy
Conference, by omission or addition of anything in
word or deed expressive of Doctrine, and also what
previous alterations were then confirmed.

The third point is, that to ascertain the power of
words, we must look hack to the history of the whole
Church, and ascertain what meaning has been assigned
to them, either by formal decisions of Church Councils,
or by the controversies brought to a successful issue
by the acute and sanctified intellects of the great
Doctors and Theologians of the Catholic Church.

And now, what does your Church, my Eev.
church teaching Brethren, lead you to believe is the meaning
Consecration. and worth of that function which she calls
Consecration.

I would at once refer you to that part of the Com-
munion Office which she specially designated in 1662
as “ The Prayer of Consecration.”

In that prayer you have to do certain acts, and to
accompany those acts with certain words. You have
“ to take the paten into your hands” — “ to break the
bread” — “ to lay your hand upon the bread” — “ to
take the cup into your hand,” and “ to lay your hand
upon every vessel in which is any wine to be conse-
crated”— and whilst you do this, you have to give
utterance to certain words, which Our Blessed Lord
once spoke with Power “ in the same night that He
was betrayed.”

And, further, you are ordered by a rubric that “ if
the consecrated bread or wine be all spent before all

have communicated,” you are “ to consecrate more
according to that form before prescribed, beginning at
(‘ Our Saviour in the same night/ &c.) for the blessing
of the bread ; and at (£ Likewise after supper/ &c.) for
the blessing of the cup.”

And, again, it is ordered in another rubric that
“ When all have communicated, the minister shall
return to the Lord’s Table, and reverently place upon
it what remaineth of the consecrated elements, cover-
ing the same with a fair linen cloth.”

And, lastly, in another rubric, direction is given
that “ If any remain of that which was consecrated,
it shall not be carried out of the Church, but the
Priest and such other of the communicants as he
shall then call unto him, shall immediately after the
Blessing reverently eat and drink the same.”

It would seem to me, my Brethren, impossible to
suppose, even if we had no help to appreciate the real
meaning of all these rules, that the Church, which
has given them to you, did not attach a very great
significance and value to the act of Consecration.

But when you call to mind that the Church of
Christ has from the very first attached a very definite
meaning to Consecration — that the laying on of hands
(one of the “ principles of the Doctrine of Christ”) has
ever been used as the means of giving effect to this
power entrusted to man, and (what is of far greater
moment) that these very same words of Our Lord, by
which you consecrate the elements, have been em-
ployed by the Church from the very first, just as you
now use them — not, that is, as a mere narrative, or as

a gospel, but as the words of Consecration, there is, it
seems to me, no room left for a doubt that our Church
has, in the presence of an opposing theory, retained in
deed and word, with a deliberate intention, and most
wisely, the ancient form of blessing, and of setting
apart the elements of bread and wine for these high
and mysterious purposes.

I would also observe that by detaching them, in
one instance, from the words of prayer with which
they are connected, our Church has given a most
significant token that she retains the ancient Doctrine
of Consecration with regard both to its causes and its
effect.

I will only add, that such teaching we should
expect from thosea who, at the time of this last and
binding settlement, gave, in the forms of Consecrating
Bishops and Ordering Priests, its proper place to the
Imposition of Hands — added in the Office for Baptism
the prayer for the Sanctification of the water —
provided for the reverent eating and drinking of any
consecrated bread and wine which remained,13 and
changed in the Litany the word Pastors into Priests.

And what, my Brethren, is that effect which our
church TeachmgChurch teaches us to look for from the con-

about Effect

of consecration.secration 0f the elements in the Sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper ?

I answer without hesitation, because I think the
evidence I can produce is very clear, that our Church
witnesses that through Consecration the Body and

a Revision of Book of Common Prayer, by J. C. Fisher, M.A.,
2nd edit., p. 325. b Idem, p. 312.

Blood of Christ become really present, and by this I
mean “ present without us,” and not only “ in the soul
of the faithful receiver or to use words very familiar
to you, my Rev. Brethren, the Body and Blood of
Christ are present objective, and not subjective only.

On this subject you would all naturally turn for
information to the Catechism, Articles, Evidence of

Objective Pre-

Prayers, and Rubrics of our Church, and caSsmT&c.
this I am about to do.

In the latter part of the Catechism, where very
definite and plain instruction is given about the two
Sacraments, there is, as you are aware, a very marked
distinction to be traced between the account of the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the Sacrament of
Baptism.

In the account of Baptism the instruction is ranged
under two heads, namely, the outward part and the
inward part ; whereas, in the account of the Lord's
Supper, the instruction falls into a threefold division
— namely, the outward part, the inward part, and the
benefits of the Sacrament.

Of course, it would be only our duty to presume
that our Church had a distinct intention in making
this difference; but, in addition to this, we knowa that
Bishop Overall, the author of this part of the
Catechism, which was added in 1604, not only ex-
pressed in it his own convictions, but embodied herein
the theology of S. Augustine and the Western Church,
and so treated the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper

a Revision of Book of Common Prayer, by J. C. Fisher, 2nd
Ed., pp. 217-228 ; and see Appendix, p. 146.

under the three heads of the Sacramentum, the res
Sacramenti, and the virtus Sacramenti.

Moreover, in speaking of the second part, namely,
the res Sacramenti, the Church says that the Body
and Blood of Christ are “ verily and indeed taken and
received,” thus using words of well-known value to
theologians, and the force of which is well explained
to us by Heylin,a when he says, “ Verily and indeed
saith the English Book — vere et re ipsa, or vere et
realiter, saith the Latin translation, by which the
Church doth teach us to understand that Christ is
truly and really present, though after a spiritual
manner, in the blessed Sacrament.”

Nor is it enough to say that this distinct teaching
of the Church in 1604 was not disturbed in 1662.

In that last revision, the Doctrine about the Sacra-
ments was not only confirmed, but many things were
done to give additional significance to such confirma-
tion, both by new statements and by the renewed con-
firmation of other previous changes in matters, which
helped to define and make clear the Doctrine of the
Church about the presence of Christ’s Body and Blood
in the Sacrament.

I cannot, of course, do more in the time for which
From other I can claim your attention in this Charge

Parts of the n

Prayer Book, than illustrate what I mean by a tew
instances. The subject is itself too large to try to
exhaust the evidence which it holds, and all of you,
whether Clergy or Laity, alreadjr have, I am sure,
the means close at hand for informing yourselves

4 Cyprian Angl., p. 23.

about it, and most of you are possibly already
acquainted with the facts of the case.

In 1662,a the Revisors, when they changed the place
in the office for Holy Communion of that which is
now the first exhortation to be used after the Sermon,
made the following alteration in it : —

The words in the exhortation of 1552 were —
“ Wherefore it is our duty to render most humble
and hearty thanks to Almighty God, our Heavenly
Father, for that He hath given His Son, our Saviour,
Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our
Spiritual food and sustenance, as it is declared unto us
as well by God's word as by the Holy Sacraments of his
blessed Body and Blood." But in 1662 the last clause
is abridged and modified, and stands thus : — “ But
also to be our Spiritual food and sustenance in that
Holy Sacrament.”

Again, in 1552,b a Declaration at the end of the
Communion office explained that by ordering that
the communicants should receive kneeling , “ it is not
meant that any adoration is done, either unto the
Sacramental bread and wine there bodily received,
or unto any real or essential presence there being
of Christ’s natural flesh and blood.”

In 1559 this Declaration was omitted with a view,
it is supposed, of conciliation.

In 1662 this Rubric was restored.

But when it was restored, the words “real or
essential presence” were changed into “corporal

a Rev. of Book of Common Prayer, by J. C. Fisher, p. 310.
b Idem, pp. 196 and 296-298.

presence and so by only excluding from the teach-
ing of the Church a corporal or material presence, a
sanction was given to the doctrine of a spiritual and
real presence.3

Again, the alterations in the form for delivering
the Sacrament are full of significance.

Our present form is almost identical with the one
settled in 1559, and which was not disturbed in 1604.

Moreover this in its present form witnesses to
past struggles. It holds, in fact, the form of de-
livering the Sacrament which was sanctioned in
1549, and also the form which was sanctioned in
1552.

The first form is a precatory one, almost identical
both with that in the Sarum Manual, and the one in
the York Rite, and was most suitable as long as the
Doctrine of the Real Presence was held, but it
became quite unsuitable, when, under Zuinglian
influences, the only aspect of the Holy Communion
which was received was that of a memorial and
commemoration ; and so in 1552 the words were
entirely omitted, and the last part of the present
form was substituted.

In 1559, 1604, and 1662 our Reformers were led,
by God’s mercy, to combine in one form both the
words of 1549 and the words of 1552, and thus to
shew that whilst they retained the belief in that one
commemorative aspect expressed in the words of
1552, they had replaced in their own convictions

See Appendix, p. 146.

the Doctrine of the Presence, which was tanght in
1549 and discarded in 1552.

The only change I remark was made in 1662 in
the form of 1604 and 1559 is, in appearance at any
rate, a very slight one. The two forms are no longer
connected together by the conjunction ; and I think
it likely that this was done with the view of asserting
with greater distinctness both Doctrines, namely,
that of the Real Presence and that of the Commemo-
ration.

Again, the Rubrics which provide first for the
covering and secondly for the reverent consumption
of what remains of the consecrated bread and wine
were both introduced in 1662, and this, we doubt
not, to teach the Doctrine of Christ’s Presence in
the Sacrament.

Again, it seems to me, that it is only a belief in
this mysterious Doctrine of the Real Presence which
enables us to give, as we are bound to do, to every
word of the Prayers, both before and after we receive
the Body and Blood of Christ, their full meaning.

For example, in the prayer of humble Access, when
we pray to God that we may “ so eat the flesh of
Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and drink His Blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His
Body and our souls washed through His most
precious Blood,” we not only ask that our bodies and
souls may be cleansed, but that we may so eat and
drink the Body and Blood of Christ that our bodies
and souls may be cleansed by that Body and that
Blood — or, as I should say, we beseech our God that

the res Sacramenti may put forth its virtus to our
strengthening and refreshing.

But further, this literal, and as I think, only ade-
quate interpretation of this careful and reverent
language, is much confirmed by the fact that a pro-
posal was made by the Nonconformists, and rejected,
to alter the wording and so Doctrinal teaching of
the passage, by adding the word Sacrifice, and so
substituting for the words “ That our sinful bodies
may be made clean by His Body and our souls
washed through His most precious Blood,” the
following words, c< That our souls and bodies may be
washed and cleansed by the sacrifice of His most
precious Body and Blood.”

And so, too, in the thanksgiving after Communion
it is faith in this Doctrine, which naturally (so to
speak) finds utterance in the words of that antient
Prayer, in which we humbly beseech God that “ all
we, who are partakers of this Holy Communion, may
be fulfilled with Thy grace and Heavenly Benediction.”

There is one other point I would refer to in
corroboration of what I have said. The

From the re-

jection of reaction of the proposal of the Commis-

Changes pro- d IX

TffdcommS' sioners of William III. to change these

sioners. .

statements of Eucharistic Doctrine m the
Catechism shows most clearly what Doctrine, theo-
logians, who lived so soon after the last Revision of
1662, understood was held in those statements.

Nor was the teaching of our great Doctors in 1662
And from the inconsistent with the teaching of the theo-
2sth Article. i0gians 0f the previous century, to whom

we owe our Thirty-nine Articles. The 28th Article
was written by one of my predecessors, Bishop
Geste, and as he in a letter to Sir William Cecil
reports that he “ whose penning it was” had assured
his brother of Gloucester (Bishop Cheney) that the
expression in the Article “ only ” “ did not exclude
the presence of Christ’s Body from the Sacrament,
but only the grossness and sensibleness in the receiv-
ing thereof,” I need say no more about the Article,
except that the word “given” seems to me to be
only consistent with the doctrine of an objective
Presence. But I would beg you to read my pre-
decessor’s Letter, which I shall print in the Appendix
to this Charged

With regard to the commemorative, impetratory
sacrifice offered in the Holy Communion, Witness to

. commem. sacri-

every one who accepts the witness of the fice b>r Church-
Church to the truth of this Doctrine, and is fair
minded, must admit that the teaching of our Church
on the subject is less explicit than on the truth of the
Real Presence.

At the same time I do not question her recognition
of this Doctrine as part of the Divine deposit, and I
would account for her seeming reticence about this
Sacerdotal act of those, whom, in the heading of
one of her Articles15 she expressly calls “ Sacerdotes,”
in the following way.

Before the Reformation the Doctrine of Sacrifice
had been thrown into an exaggerated prominence,
the idea of Communion being quite overshadowed by

a See Appendix, p. 147. b Art. xxxii.

it. This exaggeration our Reformers desired to
correct, and in doing so, they reversed the order of
prominence.

They made in our Communion Service, as both
the name and structure of it prove, the idea of
Communion the leading one, and the idea of Sacrifice
the accessory, and subordinate one.

We believe,3 moreover, that they were the more
induced to do this by their anxiety entirely to dis-
countenance a vulgar error, that the Eucharistic
Sacrifice was a reiteration of the Sacrifice on the
Cross.

But still the Doctrine of Sacrifice has most cer-
tainly its place in our service, for it is inseparable
from that act of Consecration, which alone makes a
real Communion with Christ’s Sacramental life
possible.

Easterns and Westerns, as I have already said,
agree in this ; and they who gave to our Com-
munion Service its present form, could not, when
they did so, have been ignorant (as some would seem
to insinuate) that the presence or the absence of an
outward ritual exhibition would not affect that which
existed in virtue of the Consecration.

I would also here remind you that in the antient
Churchb the words Holy Table and Altar were used
as synonyms — that our familiar expressions Altar
services and Altar rails witness to this truth — that it
is still the law of our Church that “the Chancels
should remain as they have done in times past,” and

a Palmer on Church, ii. 463. b Krazer tie Liturgiis, p. 165.

so retain their antient furniture ; that in the prayer,
when all have communicated, the previous act is
spoken of as a sacrifice which is one, both “ of
praise and thanksgiving,”21 and “ our bounden duty
and service.”

In the statement I have already made about
Absolution I have reminded you what it is Witness of '

Church to

for which I claim the authority of our Absolution.
Church — that I consider that he at any rate who uses
the form in the Morning and Evening Prayer, or in
the office of Communion, or in the office for the
Visitation of the Sick, as one who has had special
power and authority committed to him to absolve
sinners, is not to be charged with dishonesty.

Our Church whether she uses the declaratory, or
optative, or precatory, or indicative form of Abso-
lution, certainly teaches that her Priests can exercise
powers not entrusted to any layman, however saintly ;
and there are two very remarkable circumstances
connected with this.

The first is — that whatever have been on other
points, the variations in the Doctrine of our Church,
as expressed in her formularies, whether those of
1549, or 1552, or 1559, or 1604, or 1662, she has
never wavered about that doctrine, which holds the
exercise of these delegated powers of The One Priest
of His Church.

The other is — that though she might have laid
aside the indicative form, on the ground that it was
not the most antient one, and only introduced into

8 See Appendix, p. 147.

F 2

the Church in the 13th century, she has throughout
retained it, and thus shewn that she had no doubt
about the function of the Priest in remitting sins,
even if a form, which seemed to point more directly
to the source of all power and authority, was pre-
ferred. The two slight but significant alterations
made in 1662 in the Rubric in that part of the service
for the visitation of the sick, which precedes the
Absolution, confirm rather than weaken my state-
ment. It was then ruled by way of addition that
the Priest should move the sick person to make a
special confession, and should only absolve him, if
he humbly and heartily desired it.

By the first change the Church provided the sick
man with help to seek the grace of Absolution, and
by the second guarded against the abuse of the
privilege.

But if we can thus claim the authority2 of our
Church for the Doctrines of the Beal Presence, the
Commemorative Sacrifice, and what is called Sacer-
dotal Absolution, I could cite to you almost

This Teaching

g3 AnglicL numberless extracts from the writings of
authorities. most eminent theologians of the

Church from the time of the Reformation to the
last revision, and, (what is of more moment to us in
dealing with this charge of dishonesty,) from the
time of the last revision to the present time, who all
concur in giving the interpretation to the formu-
laries of our Church as then settled, which I have
claimed for them.

a Appendix, i'. 14S.

I will not, however, weary you by reading to you
these details, but I would refer you to the many
excellent works which fully supply this information.

Thus with regard to the Power of the Priesthood
in Absolution, I would advise you to read a pamphlet
on the subject by the Rev. W. Cooke, a and very
specially his appendix containing quotations from
nearly fifty of the most eminent English divines.

Many of these authorities Mr. Cooke has “ brought
forward simply to prove the fact that men who have
held the very highest views on Absolution, and have
expressed those views in the very strongest language,
have not been barely tolerated in the Church of Eng-
land, but have been raised to its highest places.5 5

I shall also add in the Appendix13 to this Charge a
few other authorities ; and I shall now content myself
with expressing my belief, that if you will give a
careful consideration to them, you will readily make
the words of the famous Dean of St. Paul’s, Dr. John
Donne, c your own.

“For confession, we require public confession in
the congregation ; and in time of sickness, upon the
death-bed, we enjoin private and particular confes-
sion, if the conscience be oppressed; and if any man
do think that that which is necessary for him upon
his deathbed, is necessary every time he comes to
Communion, and so come to such a confession, if any
thing lie upon him, as often as he comes to Com-

a The Power of the Priesthood in Absolution, by Rev. W.
Cooke. Appendix, p. ] . «J. H. and J. Parker.

h See Appendix, p. J48. c Dr. J. Donne’s Sermons, T. 5, p. 431.

munion, we blame not, we dissuade not, we dis-
counsel not, that tenderness of conscience, and that
safe proceeding in the soul.”

So again, with regard to the Doctrines of the Real
Presence and the Commemorative Sacrifice, many of
our theologians have drawn up very full catenae of
Anglican authorities, all of whom vindicate as the
Doctrine of the Church of England such teaching as
is held in a few words of one of her greatest bishops.

Bishop Andrews says in a sermon on the Nativity,
“ This (His flesh) He gave for us in Sacrifice, and
this He giveth us in the Sacrament, that the Sacrifice
may by the Sacrament be truly applied to us.”

You will find in the Appendixa a reference to some
writers who will enable you to form some estimate of
the teaching of Church of England Divines on these
mysterious subjects.

There are, of course, as I have already reminded
you, obvious reasons, my Brethren, why an English-
man speaking to Englishmen should be jealous to
vindicate himself from the suspicion of dishonesty
— but my belief and teaching about the Church of
England give me an added interest in this question
of honesty.

If, indeed, I looked upon our Church as simply a
The question of mere voluntary society, bound together by

Honesty is a . .

vital one. some intellectual and moral ties to give
effect to certain opinions and views, which any of our
Reformers may have held in common with Lutherans
or Zuinglians, I should not, maybe, take this additional

a See Appendix, pp. 1.53 to 1.59.

interest in that question. But as I hold that what-
ever be the debt of gratitude we owe to the Reformers,
and it is a very great one, we do not owe to them the
being and foundation of our Church, and that our
Church is the old Ante-Reformation Church of Eng-
land, freed from the abuses which had crept in
during the middle ages ; and further, as I have been
taught from my earliest youth to yield obedience to
the Church of England, as representing a great and
necessary Ecclesiastical Principle, I am most jealously
anxious to ascertain with all honesty what her real
teaching is, and so to satisfy myself that her claims
upon my allegiance on other grounds do not clash
with the claims of God’s Revelation.

The result, in some few instances, in my case, and
I trust in yours, is now before you.

But if, my Brethren, I desire for you and for
myself, that we should not give any occa- And concerns
sion to have the charge brought against us,
that we do not honestly teach the Doctrine Doctnnc-
of the Church of England, on its positive side, I am
not less anxious that we should with equal honesty
distinctly contradict those Doctrines which our
Church negatives.

To-day I am of course specially alluding to all
such negative statements as are contained in the
25th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, and 37th Articles, and
the clear testimony borne by our Church at the end
of the office for Holy Communion “ that no adoration
is intended or ought to be done either unto the
Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or

unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s Natural Flesh
and Blood.”

These negations may be summed up in some such
words as these : — “ The substance of Bread and
Wine is not changed. ”a

The sacrifice of Christ’s natural Body is not re-
iterated and repeated in that most effectual act of
pleading which is called the Commemorative Sacrifice.

Adoration is not due to the consecrated Bread
and Wine, although “ Christ our Lord (as Bp.
Andrews says) in or without the Sacrament is to be
adored.”

The Presence of Christ is not that of an organical
body and of a material character.

Nor must you forget that there is also a negative
side to the teaching of our Church with regard to
Absolution.

Your Church denies that Confession and Absolu-
tion are like the two Sacraments of Christ, Baptism
and the Supper of the Lord, generally necessary to
Salvation.

If, then, with the Homily, b you ever speak of it as
a Sacrament, you must vindicate this distinction of
your Church, and you may be thankful that, through
this very distinction, you are the more free to insist
upon the penitent’s having those dispositions, which
are the necessary qualifications for Absolution, and
to warn persons against the exceeding peril of pro-
faning that Holy Ordinance, and so of bringing upon
their souls the guilt of sacrilege.

a Art. xxviii. ; see Appendix, p. 159.

b See Appendix, p. 160.

At the time of the Reformation such guilt was, it
is said, very frequently incurred, and I question not
that our Reformers were glad to find themselves
justified in making the question of Confession one
less of obligation than of the claims and privileges
of an awakened conscience.

But I must now pass on to another subject, which
has for some little time engaged much of

Ritualism.

the thought of the Church, and which has
always been closely connected with Doctrine, and
of late has been almost forced by those opposed to
it into the very nearest relations to it.

I am referring, as you will have already, I doubt
not, supposed, to all that outward part of Religion
which consists of those forms, ceremonies, tokens,
and comely appendages of worship, which are now
generally, though not very accurately, classed under
Ritualism, and which have been associated, as you
are all aware, with the Doctrines called Sacerdotal,
such as the Real Presence, the Commemorative
Sacrifice, or Sacramental Union with the One
Sacrifice, and Absolution.

Now the first thing I have to say to you on this
subject is that the question of the present ^q^her s
day is not whether there should be any ^ oUugtwi°dbe
outward Forms or Ceremonies.

It is admitted on all sides that there must be
some, and this admission I would now justify, and
in doing so I shall, I think, only make statements
in which you will all, my Brethren, whether Laity or
Clergy, be of one mind with me.

I say then, — that it is according to the analogy of
nature, that outwarda agents should act upon our
souls, and move them through our different senses —
that the outward observances to which the New
Testament is opposed, are those old prefigurative
ceremonies, which when He Who is the Antetype
was come, became unmeaning and lifeless — that as
Christ appointed some ordinances, for example the
blessed Sacraments, it is clear that the laws of the
supernatural kingdom were not so changed as to
make all outward things like those, which He had
abolished, lifeless.

I would further add that, though the new temple
is illuminated with the presence of God and
Christ, and is the dwelling place of angels, and
souls of just men, and so is invisible ; yet that
there must be some means of manifesting that
this building is being reared — that there should be
some tokens given, for the glory of God, and the
good of the redeemed, that the Lord has claimed the
earth as His purchased inheritance, and so is fulfilling
those glowing words of the Prophet with regard to
“ that temple which sanctifieth the gold,”b “the
glory of Lebanon has been given unto it, the excel-
lency of Carmel and Sharon. ”c

But, on the other hand, I witness that there may
be a superstitious use of such outward means of mani-
festing our belief in Christ’s Lordship over the prince
of this world, and that men may, in collecting and

a See Appendix, p. 160.
b St. Matt, xxiii. 17. c Jer. xxxv. 2.

making offerings of gold, forget the temple, which, as
I have said, sanctifieth them — and that “ the king’s
daughter,” wherever, whether in a cottage or in a
dungeon, or by the way side, she meets her Lord to
worship and adore Him, “ is all glorious within.”

And lastly, I would warn you that men may be led
by the very opposite error to deny the claims of
instinctive piety, to set at naught the reverent
cautions of their Church, and in no spirit of real
humility, and in no tender consideration for others,
to contradict, as it would seem, by the absence of all
outward tokens of a better knowledge, the fact, that
the Lord has set up His Court in this world, and
established in the very midst of us the kingdom of
the Incarnation.

But if the question of Ceremonialism does not touch
the principle of all outward worship, what Butwhatis
is the principle which is so controverted ? authorised?

The matter in dispute is, what is the proper
authoritative Ritualism of the Church of England.

Of course such a question is a legal one, and the
answer to it can only be accurately given by a strict
and if need be a judicial interpretation of the law of
the Church of England.

And what such an answer would be I am too
sensible of my own want of learning, and judicial
discrimination, to venture to predict.

But perhaps from this very sense of my own
unfitness to seem to adjudicate, or even to offer a
definite opinion on this question, I feel the more
anxious to submit to you all, my Brethren, a few

considerations to moderate and temper the present
strife of tongues about it.

Supposing, then, that the rule of the considerations
Church sanctions the restoration of vest- "*■
ments, and ceremonies of devotion, and other things
of a like nature, which have from various circum-
stances fallen into desuetude, I would still say to any
of you, whose consciences may either by the dictates
of loyalty to your Church, or by hopes of benefiting
the souls of your parishioners, be stirred up to revive
these antient practices, do not, I beseech you, forget
what may be urged against such action on your part.

For example, the following pleas may be fairly put
forward, and you are bound, I think, to give them a
candid hearing: —

In all seasons of the history of the Church, and in
all parts of it, the maxim “ mos pro lege,” has had
great weight ; and with the knowledge of this I have
always accepted a dictum of my venerated and wise
predecessor, as a guide for my own conduct.

His words were,a 4 4 The doctrine of a virtual dis-
pensation from positive rules, to be inferred from
long and general desuetude, must, I think, be
allowed as necessary in the present state of our
Church ; and the conscience of any individual
Clergyman need not be aggrieved at acquiescing in
it, especially when there exists a superior power able
to give effect to the dormant rule ; and, therefore, in
a manner having the responsibility of its neglect.”

a The Obligations of* the Clergy, &c., by E. Denison, D.D.,
Bishop of Salisbury, 2nd edit., p. 16.

Again, many people, whilst they entirely admit that
outward worship, holy symbols, spiritual ordinances,
are a legitimate help to many in offering up to God
that only worship which has a place in the invisible
Temple, are so constituted as to prefer for themselves
more simple services, and to recognise in them more
distinctly the outward signs of the unseen Temple.
These persons have, you must all feel, a claim on
the consideration both of their Clergy and of their
Lay Brethren.

Others, holding fast the great Truth that no sacrifice
is so unacceptable to God as that of a victim without
a heart, and dreading above all things the substitution
of a mere formal ceremonialism for a spiritual service,
jealously watch every additional manifestation that
the best of everything is to be given to God, and
believe that there is more peril to the worshipper
in thus trying to express and so strengthen his belief,
than gain to him and to his brethren in thus witnessing
to the incoming into this world of our Lord’s invisible
Kingdom. I for one greatly respect such scruples.

Others, again, who have entirely realised the Doc-
trines symbolised by acts of outward worship, and are
most anxious to give those Doctrines a firm holding in
the convictions of all Churchmen, knowing the pre-
judice of many men against outward worship, prefer
to dispense with such help as these symbols offer, and
to struggle to gain admission to the minds and hearts
of their hearers by weapons more specially prepared
for an intellectual warfare. These, too, are advocates
of an important side of the question.

Again, there is another class of persons, who are in
some respects also opposed to the present changes, but
for very different reasons.

They fully admit that outward signs and symbols
are most powerful Teachers, and they are most anxious
that, on this very account, great caution should be
used in restoring any ceremonial observances. They
urge that there is a real danger of making symbols
mean more than they are meant to mean ; a danger
of making them suggestive not merely of the real
Doctrine of our Church, but of something beyond it ;
a danger of re-establishing by their means, in the
minds of men, superstitions which once were powerful,
and with which such symbols are popularly, even if
incorrectly associated.

I will only mention the scruples of one more class
on this subject. There are (I thank God for it) many
amongst us who are so sensitively considerate of the
difficulties of others, and so able to realise the force
that old habits have upon their Brethren, that they
fear to offend them, and possibly disaffect them by
changes of this kind.

It is not that they do not themselves care for the
rules of their Church, or disparage the value of teach-
ing by outward symbols, or are indifferent to the
claims of the great Truths so taught, but in the fear
and love of God, in an earnest desire to build up their
Brethren in the Doctrines of their Church, and so to
train them for death and judgment, they fear to imperil
the safety of questions of such moment by seeming to
balance against them matters not, indeed, of in-

difference, but of far less importance in the work of
the Ministry.

And who, my Brethren, are more to be loved and
respected, as bearing upon their characters the marks
of the Lord Jesus Christ, than these sympathising,
loving, tender, discreet, patient Pastors and Teachers?

But on the other hand, the scruples and considera-
tions I have just detailed to you are surely considerations
not the only ones which deserve a fair con- pro‘
struction.

What I am about to say presupposes, as in the last
case, that the changes lately made in Ceremonialism in
some churches rest on a legal basis.

They who are called Ritualists would urge such
pleas as these which follow.

They would say that belief involves both profession
and confession, and that, if men believe that this visible
world does not belong to him who is called its prince,
but to Him Who died on the Cross, this faith will give
utterance to its being in such works as will speak —
make a profession — testify that their faith is that
which places the worship and service of God before
everything ; and they maintain that this function of
outward religion has a special claim to notice and sup-
port in days of such wealth, and luxury, and self-
indulgence as ours.

They would further urge, that it is natural for men
who habitually dedicate their best powers to the con-
templation of Him Who is their Maker and Redeemer,
to impress on all outward religion, if there is to be any,
a sense of that glorious presence, with winch they are

striving to be ever in communion, and that thus such
expressions of the mind and heart of the worshipper
must hear some token of correspondence, however
necessarily inadequate, with all the doctrines which he
holds ; or (to give an instance), that belief in the Doc-
trine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament
cannot but tend to raise the standard of ceremonial
accompaniments of that Sacrifice and that Feast.

They would also (and here their admission is one
with which all agree) lament that such vast masses of
the people, whether educated or uneducated, are entirely
estranged from all the ordinances of our Holy Religion ;
and then they urge that it is reasonable to expect that
a religion appealing more distinctly to the eye and ear
than we have known of late would he more attractive
to such people, and so bring them at any rate within
the reach of the ministrations of the Word and Sacra-
ments, and the direct teaching of the Holy Ghost.

And they might appeal to a witness in their favour,
who has not written in their interest, to corroborate
their statement and to justify their hopes.

They would say to you, if you objected to their
enlisting the fine arts on the side of religion, we only
ask the same for religion which Mr. Mill claims for
education. In the address from which I have already
quoted, he says, “ All the arts of expression tend to
keep alive and in activity the feelings they express. Do
you think that the great Italian painters would
have filled the place they did in the European
mind, would have been universally ranked among the
greatest men of their time, if their productions had

done nothing for it, but to serve as a decoration for a
public hall or a private salon ? Their Nativities and
Crucifixions, their glorious Madonnas and Saints, were,
to their susceptible Southern countrymen, the great
school not only of the devotional but of all the elevated
and all the imaginative feelings. We colder Northerns
may approach to a conception of this function of art
when we listen to an oratorio of Handel, or give our-
selves up to the emotions excited by a Gothic cathe-
dral.”

The Ritualists might also here add, we are only
doing in our way what other Churchmen have, with less
authority and with far greater risks to all reverent faith
and love, tried to compass. They have been persuaded
by their sense of that same appalling evil, which has
so alarmed us and excited our sympathies, that it is
right to make even theatres and other places of public
resort the occasional places of meeting for preaching
the Word of God.

So again, though I do not myself set much value on
any attempt to weaken definite charges by bringing
counter-charges against those who make them, I do
think that the Ritualists may refer to the struggle
which has been for some years renewed, and is still
going on, about the surplice, and also to the offer now
at last made in some quarters to accept the surplice as
the proper vestment of the clergy, as evidence in the
one case that the present question is a question of
principle, and holds in it this very question of the
surplice; and in the other case, that it is after all
only a question of innovation upon old-established

custom, and so one which does not rest on the
ground of any vital principle.

Again, on the side of authority, the claim of the
Ritualists, if not as strong as some hold it to be, is
very considerable.3

Believing, as I do, that many of these things are
only ecclesiastical from long association, and not so in
their origin, still undoubtedly their argument for using,
as teachers of God’s truth, these outward ceremonies,
is much strengthened by the two following facts.

The first is, that they have, as Church History wit-
nesses, been used for ages to confess the mysteries of
the Faith.

And the second is, that such ceremonial corresponds
in this respect to the language of the Church, much of
which in its classical form did the work of Pagan
thought or Pagan society before it was consecrated to
the service of Christ.

Again, with a view of meeting a very popular
objection, the Ritualists ask a question, which seems to
be a very open one, namely, whether, supposing there
was a considerable restoration of Ritual Observances,
the Church of England, with her necessarily popular
service, would be in a less good or better position to
maintain her claims against Rome than she is now.

And have such arguments met generally a fair con-

iiavethe'e ^deration • or have they ll°t uncommonly
ph^n/airiyS been treated scornfully, as the special plead-
ings of dishonest men, who, with hearts dis-

Krazer tie Liturjjiis, p. 244, &c*., &e.

loyal to the Church of England, are base enough to
hold her offices, and to abuse their trust to the further-
ance of the influence of another communion ?

Of one thing, at any rate, I am certain, that any such
charges should be supported by very clear and distinct
proofs — that the Doctrines should be distinctly specified
which are condemned as being not Anglican but
Roman, and that evidence should be given to prove
the truth of such an allegation.

It seems also very strange that if such changes were
either intentionally or unintentionally made in the
interest of Rome, they should be spoken of so con-
temptuously by those who are most eager to bring all
within the Roman obedience who are at present
external to it.

Nor can I see in the remedies proposed for our

present troubles any one which can really Remedies pro-
posed

meet the difficulties of the case. insufficient.

I need scarcely assure you that if Parliament inter-
feres in this matter, in the way that has been suggested,
I shall certainly not be a consenting party to such
legislation.

However feeble might be my opposition, I should
feel bound to oppose any such proposal. For though
the measure I allude to is introduced with the plea
that it respects, and even satisfies the demands of
Ecclesiastical Principles ; it not only does not, in my
judgment, make good such a profession, but disregards
more simple, and more widely recognised obligations.
Such a mode of checking practices which claim the
sanction of established authority, might serve tempo-

g 2

100

rarily as an instrument to cast down barriers between
our branch of the Catholic Church and the various
religious bodies around us, but it would be a most
perilous precedent.

Of course the appointment of a Royal Commission
is a perfectly different thing, but I cannot connect
with it any hopes of a restoration of peace and
unity to the Church. Whatever should be its report,
it will leave the Doctrinal question, I conclude, un-
touched.

I have more faith in another and a simpler remedy,
and that is the remedy of Patience and Charity.

I would not question the loyalty of those Church-
men, be they what is called High, or be they what is
called Low ; but I would cling to the belief that con-
tinued fatherly kindness on the part of those in
authority, and the careful abstinence on all sides from
bearing false witness, would do very much to lessen
our difficulties, by constraining with the cords of love
all, and especially the young , to deal with others,
whether above them or below them, with consideration
and sympathy, and to temper zeal for God’s truth,
even when purified of all dross of mere human passion,
with the healing waters of Charity.

Thus, for example, though I for one fully admit the
claim of Symbolism to be an educator of Christians, as
well as of others, and give no credit to the assertion
that such teaching involves treachery to our Church,
still, as I have not myself learnt Doctrine from
Ritualism, and as I also thoroughly acknowledge that
many Churchmen cannot profit by such teaching, and so

101

naturally disparage its powers, I should have advice to
give to both parties.

To those who do not recognise the teaching powers
of Symbolism I would try to justify its claims to fill the
office of an educator, and I think such an endeavour
would be a very hopeful one ; and to those who are in
danger of being over forward in pressing its claims on
those who do not yet allow them, I should counsel
most urgently the exercise of consideration, and the
honest admission that the difficulties are real ones.

And here I must say that I am speaking more in
the interest of the rest of the Church of MyDiocese
England than in the interest of my own par- want of such

t Remedies.

ticular Diocese. I do not believe that in
any Diocese in the whole kingdom have there been so
few attempts to make hasty and irritating changes as
in mine.

I am of course aware that things have been said and
done in this Diocese as if the case was different.

But these charges must have been made in haste
and ignorance.

The truth is, that there has been only one Parish in
my Diocese where what is called “ extreme Ritualism”
has, as far as 1 know, been introduced, and that cer-
tainly without any sanction from me.

And it does seem to me, that all persons in authority,
and a Bishop at least as much as others, have a claim
upon their accusers, however earnest and single-minded
they may be in defence of their own opinions and
views, to raise a true and not a false issue ; and so not
to spread abroad throughout the whole Church rumours

102

about the prevalence of practices, which, whether in
themselves excellent or indifferent, have, either through
the Bishop’s carelessness, or through the effects of his
example and teaching, not prospered in his Diocese.

At the same time, my Brethren, I am not ignorant
of, or indifferent to the fact, (which is at the Roman

Tendencies and

root of these excitements of feeling), that the their Cause-
pretensions of the Church of Rome are put forward
with a power and zeal which are new to us of this
generation, and that these claims obtain a hearing, and
a consideration, which they could not gain in the days
of our youth ; and this being so, it is, I hold, the duty
of every true-hearted member of the Church of England
to consider well what are the causes of this change,
and what can be done to counteract any tendencies,
which we may discover, to discredit the claims of our
Communion to be the legitimate representative of
Christ our Lord in England.

And (may be) that which the accusations of men
acting in haste, with only partial information and
over-eager zeal may be powerless to do, the enquiries
and investigations of grave, calm, earnest, charitable,
wise minds and hearts may, and will, by the blessing of
the GoDa of Peace, effect.

At any rate, these seeming changes in men’s thoughts
and convictions cannot, you may be sure, be traced
back to any one source. Whatever be the present
strength of their current, it is the effect, not of one,
but of several tributaries. I will mention some.

* See Appendix, pp. 160, 161.

103

The Church of Rome in this country is now free from

Position of all the shackles and all the unpopularity of

Church of t #

Rome- an established and so dominant body, and
this circumstance of its being unconnected with the
State is with some in these days no slight recom-
mendation.

Then its present position enables it, with at any
rate some seeming justice, to protest against the
charge, which has been so often urged and believed,
that the faith of Rome and the rights of a free people,
like Englishmen, cannot co-exist. I do not say that
the charge was a reasonable one, but that the Church
of Rome is at present in circumstances favourable to
demand her acquittal from it, and that by her conduct
in this instance (which her very interests dictate to
her) she must to some extent stop the mouths of such
gain sayers.

Again, her traditionary readiness to use the fine arts
as a great moral and educating power secures to her
a very considerable advantage in trying to recover the
support of men who give (as men of our generation do
give) a foremost place to art amongst the agents of
civilization.

But what has had most effect in making the change
I have been speaking of is this —

There is no doubt that much of the intellect of the
educated classes in England is external to the faith.
Many mens’ minds are toiling under the weight of the
demands made upon them by the Pantheists, Positivists.
Materialists, Rationalists, Latitudinarians, Erastians
of our day, and when they are wearied with these

104

disputations, they receive an offer of rest, through
the determination of such questions by the exercise of
an unlimited authority ; and some persons have found
such an offer only too tempting, and have been seduced
to accept the proffered aid and relief.

But in trying to account for these new tendencies
towards another, and, as we believe, intru- Position of the

... i . . Church of

sive communion, it is, perhaps, more becoming England,
and prudent in us, English Churchmen, to see whether
there is anything in the circumstances of our own
position which may have helped to give such a
direction to the thoughts and feelings of any of our
brethren.

And that there are such circumstances no thoughtful
man can possibly deny.

Thus, for example — To whatever extent the mind of
our fellow-countrymen is indisposed to stamp upon any
particular creed the authority of the national con-
science, to that same extent the assertion of the
principle of an establishment weakens the power of
our claim to the allegiance of the souls of men.

Together with this disturbance of old, and, as I
assert, reasonable and godly convictions, there is in
many quarters an increase of that most weakening,
disabling distrust in the existence and power of all
ecclesiastical authority, which is generally classed
under the word Erastianism.

It is a sympton of the prevalence of such a principle
that persons entrusted with the responsibilities even of
our sacred office not unfrequently lower the tone of
their claims to govern those who have been made in

105

some matters subject to them, and sometimes substitute
for the exercise of their legitimate spiritual powers as
given them by their Lord, the freer use of those other
influences and powers, which the world gives, and so
can take away.

There is, too, not a little in the bearing and spirit of
those who are under authority much calculated to
bring the authority of our Church into contempt. I
refer to the unchastened, undutiful, uncharitable, con-
tumacious, unrestrained, unbelieving self-assertion so
prevalent in all parties of the Church. I use, my
Brethren, each of these many epithets with a definite
meaning, and when I say all parties in the Church, I
do so with the distressing conviction that the profes-
sion of principles of obedience is often not the expres-
sion of an obedient spirit.

And if I connect this upgrowth of an unchurchlike
temper with any faithless disparagement and even
relinquishment of our claims — or, I would say, of the
claims made by us in the Name of Our Lord, and so
His claims — such consequences are not the less evil and
perilous.

Again, to a certain extent we are not only eating the
fruits of our own neglect, but are experiencing the
truth of the prophet’s words— “ The fathers have eaten
sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

Men are prejudiced against our claims, and their
hopes of good from admitting them are weakened by
the indisputable fact, that when after the Restoration
the Church was all powerful, she again neglected, as
she had done before the Reformation, to use the oppor-

106

t unity which God had in His Providence given her of
fulfilling the high purposes to which He had elected
her.a

Again, the attitude and policy of our Church has
been for a long time almost only a defensive one. I
do not say that there has not been much to justify the
taking up such a position, and to make it oftentimes
almost a matter of necessity. But, to say the least of
it, such a position has given to all separatists, whether
Romanists or Protestants, very great advantages in
their attempts to weaken and undermine her founda-
tions as the Church of the Nation.

And here, my own convictions will not suffer me to
pass by one of God’s Providential dealings with us
during the last year, and by which an holy man has been
withdrawn from the Church on earth, whose firm, gentle,
loving voice was ever, though may be unconsciously to
himself, calling the hearts of all whose anxieties arose
either from the very strength of their affections for
their Spiritual Mother, or from any questionings of
their own about her claims, to the lesson which his
meek, self-denying, and dutiful life taught them about
the graces of that fellowship with Our Lord, which is
to be secured by membership in our Church.

My Brethren, the Church of England still, indeed,
retains in the past life and writings of John Keble, and
in his death in unwavering trust in the ministrations
of the Church of England, one of the most powerful
exponents of her claims to the allegiance of English-
men. But still the silence of that loving voice, which

* See Appendix, p. 161.

107

gave utterance to unhesitating, strongly-rooted convic-
tions, and clear apprehensions of truth, the loss of
power to make known to him the burdens of the heart,
and to obtain his fatherly counsel and guidance in all
matters of faith and practice, is surely a source of
present weakness to us, and a cause of anxiety for the
future, which may well awaken the fears of Churchmen.

Having very lately kept the anniversary of that
saintly man’s death, and keenly realising what he was
to us, I could not but thus remind you of this most
trying visitation by placing it amongst those circum-
stances which have of late seemed to weaken in some
respects our past position.

In making this statement of our present difficulties,
I quite admit that we may not rightly guage them,
and that, in our desire not to be overreached by those
opposed to us, we may easily over-estimate them.

This error, however, would be on the side of safety,
and without endeavouring to weigh those Possible issues

_ . of present

difficulties more accurately, I would next struggle,
suggest to you some of the issues of the present
struggle.

One would be this — the triumph of Erastianism,
and the temporary strengthening of an Establishment51
resting on no definite principles, repudiating all claims
to supernatural authority and prerogative, lowering
the tone of all teaching about Faith and Morals, and
casting out from its narrow and ever narrowing
limits, all aspirations of a deeply earnest Religion, and
so losing all those most devoted members who are

a See Appendix, p. 161.

108

ever ready to spend and be spent for the Church and
the Doctrine committed to her, because she is to them
the Body of the Incarnate Saviour, and her Doctrine
is to them the very Truth of the Word of God.

Another vision of the future, and a very lurid one,
is that of a democratic upheaving, with a levelling
suppression of all high and ennobling principles, as
transcendental, and a tyranny of the sects, substituting
the license of mere human opinions for the sober,
grave authority of the Church of God.

Or I might put a somewhat similar condition of
things in a rather different aspect.

Our old Church of England polity and faith may be
ostracised by the influence of a simultaneous, though
possibly not combined, onslaught of Ultra-Protest-
antism and Ultra-Montanism upon it, and then as
a consequence of such a successful impeachment of the
claims of our Church, there may be a reign of scep-
ticism and infidelity ; and then, after that this tyranny
has spent its malignant power, a reaction may take
place towards unlimited authority.

But if events should not justify such fears, and God
forbid that they should do so, we may be drifting into
the following condition.

The Church of England may be disestablished, and
when she has lost all the manifold blessings (and they
are priceless ones) of her present position, she may be
driven by her very weakness to throw herself upon
other principles of a better strength ; and then conscious
of the soundness of her Ecclesiastical position, and
resting her claims both on Authority, and on her one-

109

ness in Doctrine with the undivided Church, she may
trustfully, tenderly, and yet with the firm authority of
one whose Magna Charta is that large and unconditional
promise which our Lord added to His commission,
employ, and direct, and control the energies of the
eager faith, and the ardent love of her Members.

The great increase of the devotion and zeal which
have, I am told, become one of the characteristic
marks of many of her younger Members, under even
our present circumstances, would make the condition
of a free Church a very hopeful one.

But, my Rev. Brethren, there is another and a still
better issue, in my judgment, and one to

bring us, if we were but true to ourselves, courageous,
strong-hearted, patient, not ashamed to claim every
prerogative given to us by God, and so, conscious of
our own unworthiness to receive such trusts, as to be
humble, diligent, grateful, sympathising fellow-workers
with the Lord.

The remedy for our present ills and the escape from
our present danger may, I think, be included under the
one large head of changing our past defensive policy
into a constructive one — -the taking and wielding “ the
armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the
left not only the shield for defence, but the sword
and spear of the Spirit wherewith to contend against
all who oppose themselves.

By so acting we may give new life and being to the
principles which underlie, at this very moment, the
whole polity and doctrine of our Church.

110

But with a view to such a reinvigoration of our
National Church ; her claims to authority must be most
unhesitatingly maintained ; and so she must distinctly
recognise that the charge of schism is a very serious one,
and give proof that it is in her case groundless — her
oneness with the primitive undivided Church must be
set forth with unquestionable precision — a disclaimer
must be totis viribus proclaimed, as Sir William
Palmer1 has so well done in his admirable treatise on
the Church, that our formularies are not constructed in
the spirit of a compromise, but to give effect to S. Paul’s
warning, “ not to be wise above that which is written.”

The whole principles of Erastianism must be cast
aside as being no Goliath’s sword, and as utterly un-
trustworthy weapons for such a warfare as ours.

Hooker’s teaching that past abuse of a thing is not
a necessary cause of its being never used again must
be an accepted axiom.

Or, to state this point more forcibly, we must give
effect to the principle contained in a remarkable quota-
tion taken by Sir W. Palmer from Cyprian, who says,
“ Quid ergo ? Quia et honorem cathedrae sacerdotalis
Novatianus usurpat, num idcirco cathedrae renunt^are
debemus? Aut quia Novatianus altare collocare, et
sacrificia offerre contra jus nititur; ab altari et sacri-
ficiis cessare nos oportet, ne paria et similia cum illo
celebrare videamur ?”

The admission of the truth of such a statement
would remove that present seeming unwillingness to
utilise all that is noble and of good report in man,

a See Appendix, p. 162.

and to give scope, in properly regulated organisations,
for those higher and more perfect forms of self-dedica-
tion to God of a free Spirit, which a blessing on God’s
word, whether read or preached, must, it seems to me,
stir up in many minds honestly bent on discovering the
mind of God in His Revelations.

Another means of recovering influence over the con-
sciences of men for the claims of our Church would be
to distinguish between what is Anglican, a because
Catholic, and what is not Anglican, because only
Roman.

Of course it is beyond the limits of my time to-day
to point out to you how this may be done ; but every
one who in the love of God and his brethren tries to
avoid bearing false witness on these points is helping
forward so blessed a result.

Such an attempt would not include any sympathy
with points of Discipline or Doctrine, such as the
forced celibacy15 of the Clergy, the denial of the Cup to
the Laity, Indulgences, that excessive veneration of the
Blessed Virgin, which is commonly designated as
Mariolatry, or any conception of our Lord’s Presence
in the Holy Eucharist which regards it as gross and
carnal. It would train the members of our Church to
be very thankful that we are free from embarrassing
questions which touch the whole authority of the
Faith, and which arise out of the modern Doctrine and
practice of Development.

Nor would the Church, so conscious of its authority.

“ See Appendix, p. 162.

See Appendix, p. 162.

112

so realising its providential position in Christendom,
so claiming to be the great barrier against Romanism
on one side, and that ultra Protestantisma on the other,
which in its attempts to disparage the grace of the
Sacraments, really brings the truths, we still all agree
in receiving, into peril, if not into discredit, be afraid of
dealing with all disturbing questions, such as those of
the present day, of Ritual.

Whilst it would not ignore the demands of an age,
which estimates so differently from those immediately
gone before it the value of aesthetics, and would take
into its service this instrument, as one of great power
in moving those emotions, which are among the lesser
handmaids of Religion, and so in drawing men within
(so to speak) the sight of the mysteries of our Faith
through such external symbolism, it would provide —
that no imputation could be possibly laid upon our
ceremonial, that it was Roman in its teaching — that
emotional religion should not be taken for more than it
is worth — and that good Christians, who were even
purists about outward worship, should not find their
scruples, or even their natural infirmities uncared for.

In a strong system, administered by the courage, and
gentleness, and patience, and sympathy of an un-
doubting faith in God and His Truth, the wants of
man’s moral and intellectual being might be met and
relieved — demands for greater liberty might be satis-
fied, because greater authority to prevent licence would

a See the Religious Weakness of Protestantism, by F. W.
Newman, 1866.

113

be secured — far more appeals for the judgment of
charity might be listened to, and favourably answered,
because both the limits within which a right faith
might exercise itself, would be more clearly defined,
and the restrictions of it to such enlarged domains
might be more easily enforced.

I have now told you, my Brethren, what is the
object before my mind — what I trust never to My hope that it
cease to pray for — and to compass which, I may be reached-
am prepared to strain every nerve, and to make, if
need be, any sacrifice.

If the signs of the times are not altogether bright,
they are not, 1 am sure, altogether dark — and I have a
confident hope, that in spite of the many obstacles, some
placed in the way by a thankful, loyal jealousy for our
present blessings, and some perhaps by less worthy
motives, we Churchmen may still, with the influence
and power of hearts bound to one another in our
one Head by the ties of faith and love, be enabled
to apply the Gospel remedies to the social and
moral diseases which are engendered both by un-
precedented wealth and most disastrous poverty, and
by the inherited and still increasing alienation of
the masses from the ordinances of our holy Religion.

And for this end we need, I repeat it, a Church
Policy of a positive and constructive temper, which
shall claim allegiance to our Church as representing
the faith and the practice of undivided Christendom.

And why are we not to have it ?

It very much depends, my Brethren, on the Lay
members of the Church what answer to such Much depends
a question events will justify. on Laity.

114

The issue is of course with God alone, hut the Laity
have their allotted place in God’s counsels, and if they
are loyal to their Church, they have a right to the
dignity of being reckoned among “ the fellow workers
with God.”

But, my Lay Brethren, if you would use these

Address to prerogatives which belong to those on

LaIty- whom the Unction of the Holy One, our
Prophet, Priest, and King, has in a true sense fallen,
you must not forget that every Office has its duties and
responsibilities, and that no one can discharge them
with a good conscience who does not take pains to
make himself well informed about them.

This you will best do by using your Prayer Book
and the other formularies of your Church as your
guide in the study of God’s word.

Such study will enable you to separate the wheat
from the tares, and to determine what has on it the
stamp of the Church of England, and what has not.

In such honest endeavours to inform yourselves what
is the faith and duty of a Churchman, your own
Clergy will, I am sure, most cheerfully give you (as
they are bound to do) help, and will advise you
what other books can provide you dependable assistance.

However that which I mainly insist on, is that you
should go to the Prayer Book and formularies of your
Church, and not trust to party publications, and their
one-sided statements.

I would also urge you to take your part heartily in
making your Church and its offices and schools such as
to witness that you have a care for the things of God,

115

and the souls of your brethren. Every one acquainted
with the organisation of a parish knows how much the
excellence of the day school, the night school, the
Sunday school, and the parish choir depends on the
co-operation of the Laity and their families with their
Clergy, and I am thankful to believe that such expres-
sions of interest in the offices of the Church, and the
many ministrations of charity are increasing amongst
us, and I thank God and bless you for it.

But do not misapprehend me. Whilst I am con-
fident that by not restoring your Churches, or by not
improving the conduct of the services, you will not
help to exorcise any spirit of disloyalty to the Church
of England, which may have taken possession of your
neighbours ; I am still more certain that by no amount
of offerings for the sanctuary, or of willing, zealous
co-operation with your Clergy, you can effect that one
needful thing, namely, the changing your hearts into
the Temples of the Holy Ghost.

And here I would specially remind you of the
relation in which you stand to me and I to you.

If I have ever done anything to justify the
unsound opinion that the Bishop is merely the
overseer of the Clergy, I have done, through infirmity,
that which is entirely contrary to my own convictions.

The ties which bind a Bishop to his Clergy are
indeed very peculiar ones, but there are others which
should equally connect the Bishop and his Laity, in all
which betokens mutual responsibilities and a close
relationship ; and under the sense of this I would now
speak to you.

h 2

116

The true idea of the position in which the Laity
and their Clergyman should stand to one another, is
that of confidence ; but if there is good reason why
this idea cannot be realised, the Laity are quite right
in seeking the arbitration of the Bishop.

I am, of course, well aware that all delations of
such troubles are painful to a good Christian ; but then,
on the other hand, the pain attending on such an act
is a great protection to the accused party that the
charge is not lightly made ; and I must add that I
think that combinations, which are made with a view
of lessening this pain and embarrassment, and which
thus weaken this sense of responsibility, are very
perilous, tend to sow broadcast the seeds of suspicion
and distrust — will probably cause eventually a great re-
action in the minds of men of goodwill and peace, — and
that any complaints presented by them, however just
they may be, ought not to be dealt with by the Bishop
in any other way, except that which the law marks out,
namely, in his Court.

At the same time, I assure you that I have no
sympathy with any disorderly or inconsiderate conduct
towards you, whoever may be guilty of it. I have
ever counselled the exercise of a spirit of moderation,
and a patient deferential bearing, not only towards
honest convictions, but even towards ill-founded pre-
judices ; and as an instance of this, I have, in the
interest of the laity, never allowed (to the best of my
power) any alterations to be made in a Church without
my faculty — without (that is) the legal authority of my
Court, in which all objections may be urged, and are

117

sure to meet from the Chancellor of the Diocese the
consideration of the candid mind of a great lawyer.

But, on the other hand, I should spurn myself, and
feel myself worthy of your contempt, if I did not seek
to act in any question between any of my Laity and my
Clergy with the most thorough determination to give a
full measure of justice to the Clergyman ; and I trust
no considerations, however powerful they may seem to
be for the moment, shall ever move me to swerve from
such a course.

It is also my purpose never to allow any one, as far
as I am concerned, to hope that he can maintain his
own rights by assailing any which are mine by the law
either of Christ, or of my country ; and I trust that I
shall never give any of you cause to suspect that I
have been overawed by any undue regard for the praise
of men to act unfairly either by any Clergyman or
any Layman.

It will probably occur to you, my Brethren, that
part of what I have just said to you has been occa-
sioned by the circumstances of suspicion and distrust
in which some of you have been specially placed
towards me, and though my words are, I think, not
unbecoming a Bishop at any season in addressing the
Lay members of the Church, I admit that I consider
them very seasonable at the present time, when there
seems to be some risk of the weakening of the powers
of our Church to maintain her claims against all who
would disallow them, by encouraging evil surmisings
and charges of dishonesty, instead of acts of mutual
forbearance and confidence.

118

Bat if the hope of success in raising a constructive
Address Church system, which shall both provide for
to ciergy. a fuuer exercise of authority, and also at
the same time guarantee a larger measure of liberty to
Churchmen, very much depends on the loyalty of the
Laity to the teaching of their Church, it depends still
more, we are sure, on you, my Rev. Brethren, the
Clergy ,a upon your doing (to use' very familiar words)
“ your duty in that state of life unto which it has
pleased God to call you and I would now explain
to you exactly what [ mean by saying this.

With a view to this discharge of your duty, you
must have satisfied yourselves what is the exact
meaning of your engagement “ to minister the
Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ,
as the Lord has commanded, and as this Church and
Realm hath received the same;”b and also of those
other words which the Bishop addressed to you when
you received the Order of Priesthood — “ Receive the
Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the
imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost
forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins thou dost
retain they are retained, and be thou a faithful
dispenser of the Word of God and of His Holy
Sacraments.”

I do not say that you will not find different inter-
pretations given of these words ; but what I do say, is
that you are bound to try to convince yourselves, what

a See Appendix, p. 163.

b Form of Ordering of Priests ; see Appendix, pp. 163, 164.

119

is their historical and so true meaning, and that you
should use, as helps to this, the writings of those who
lived at the time when the Church last put her stamp
of authority on them, and that next, if need be, you
should appeal, as your Church would herself guide you
to do, to the teaching of the primitive Church.

Of course, I do not forget that these words of mine
to you might be so construed as not only to include all
the Theology which the Eastern Church evolved in
giving an answer in the six first General Councils to
the question — What were the relations of the Three
Divine Persons to one another, and what they had done
for man; and which Theology the Western Church
has embodied in its glorious Creed, called the
Athanasian ; but also may seem to require you, as
honest men, to master all teaching about the Sacra-
ments and Ordinances of the Church, and the
progressive work of the grace of God in the hearts of
the redeemed ; and which teaching is generally classed
under objective and subjective anthropology.

But you will not, I am sure, my Brethren, so mis-
construe my advice to you, and will understand that I
am not setting before you a standard of attainment,
to which I have certainly never attained myself, and
that I am only urging you to seek such help to solve
any difficulties, as is very close at hand, and lies in no
very large compass.

And this, at any rate, you will, I am sure, gain by
such studies. You will gain the strongest assurance
that the office and work of a Priest is a real work, real
in the sense of its being an instrument of the Holy

120

Ghost in incorporating mankind into the humanity of
the Word made flesh.

I need hardly add to this that, with the conception
of the reality of your work, you will not, through any
mistaken feelings, think it a token of personal humility
to despoil your office of its prerogatives, but will he
content to have laid to your charge (if it must be so),
as a consequence of your faithful stewardship of what
is not yours, but the Lord’s, the offence of priestcraft,
and so to bear, when thus accused, 4 “ the reproach of
Christ.”

Let not, then, I pray you the ignominy attaching at
this day to that word Sacerdotal deter you from
trying to ascertain both what is your own position in
the Kingdom of the Incarnation, and also whether
other powers, besides those related to the Sacraments
and Absolution, and which are connected by all
Churchmen, and even by the sects, with the Ministry
of the Gospel, are not really held in that large term.

Take, for example, the preaching the Gospel. Every
man, who uses these words with any fixed meaning,
will find that if, by a careful analysis, he resolves that
meaning into its constituent parts, it holds functions
which are instrumental, ministerial, mediatorial, almost
sacramental.

But this is not all. You may easily obtain evidence
that in the denominations persons are urged to go to
their Ministers, and to seek from them privately the
healing of the Gospel for their wounded spirits, and
you will, I am sure, shrink from supposing, that such a
ministration of our Lord is merely connected with

121

those moral and intellectual distinctions which belong
to nature rather than to grace, or that they can obtain
such aid without enabling their Ministers (be they who
they may) to act with regard to them judicially.

I have received an important testimony to the fact
I have just stated, and I shall print it in the Appendix
to this Charged

The matter at issue and involved in the question is
of the utmost moment, and one whose fame for learning
and piety is in all the Churches has given such a warn-
ing with regard to it, that I must read it to you.

My venerated friend, Dr. Pusey, in the Preface to a
Sermon on the text, “ Will ye also go away?” makes
the following statement : — “ My own strong conviction
is that the issue of that battle in the English Church
will depend very mainly on the issue of that which is
now waged against what is called e Sacerdotalism.’
People attach doubtless different meanings to the
word ; but what is really included in its rejection is
the belief of any medium between the soul and God.
It involves primarily the rejection of Sacraments, and
therein of any absolving power committed to the Priest-
hood ; and, secondarily, any authority in matters of
faith other than the conscience of each individual recog-
nising as true in Holy Scripture what commends itself
to its individual judgment. The attack has been
dexterously begun. ‘ Sacerdotalism’ suggests the idea
of human weakness and arbitrariness. People are
taught to think that men put the Sacraments in the
place of Christ. They appeal to men’s love for our

a Appendix, p. 164.

122

Divine Redeemer, and forget that the selfsame argu-
ments may be turned against the mediation of our
Lord Himself, as coming between the soul and God.
This has been before now — in our own times.’’

This is, however, my Brethren, only one side of Truth,
and the present controversies about that side suggest
to me to give you several cautions in connexion
with it.

Thus I would remind you that the holding a
principle with all firmness does not prevent your
applying it with the greatest consideration for others
who have not yet received it ; and that it is an act of
great unwisdom to irritate men’s minds, and so stir up
hostility to any such principle by constant attempts to
give the principle some fresh manifestations.

And here, by way of giving force to such counsel, I
would caution you to have in constant remembrance
the resolution of S. Cyprian, “ to do nothing without
the advice and good will of the people,” and not to
omit in your calculations of what that may be, the
fact that you have to deal “ not with Spaniards and
Italians, and their uncontrollable imaginations, but with
Englishmen, who, if. wanting in this great gift, have
very specially the blessing of an honest conscience,
and a jealous suspicion of every person and thing
which seems to compromise the independence of their
thought and action.”

The same tender care for others and the same loyal
zeal for the furtherance of the Gospel, will also lead
you to give to the fact, that the days, in which we are
living, are characterised by a general intolerance of all

123

exact and definite statements of religious truth, some
influence on your teaching.

I would also exhort you to be a distinct witness
that instrumental agency may be overvalued, and that
isit possible (to use the words of an able writer) “ to
indoctrinate men with the idea that the Sacraments of
the Church will do all for them, with but little
co-operation of their own.”

I would further urge you to insist with the same
plainness of speech that these instruments will not
profit, unless used with right dispositions.

I would have you remind your people over and over
again that if S. Paul teaches the Galatiansa that Bap-
tism is the means of their putting on Christ, he had just
before taught them that faith was the instrument by
which they become children of God. And I would
have you enforce this upon their convictions by ex-
pounding to them how if the Sacrament is the Hand
of God by which He reaches the objects of His love,
Faithb is the Hand which His suppliants extend to
Him.

Yes, my Brethren, believe me, the Doctrines of
Justification by Faith, and of Sacramental Grace, have
both their place in the system of Revealed Truth ; and
it will be to your own peril, and the peril of the souls
committed to your care, if you displace either of these
Doctrines. You cannot too earnestly teach the neces-
sity of a right use of the Sacraments, but you must also

a Gal. iii. 26, 27.

b The words “with faith” were added to the words “draw near”
in our Communion Service in 1662.

124

embody in your teaching such words as those of one of
our Archbishops, namely, S. Anselm,a “ Thou believest
that thou canst be saved only by the death of Christ.
Come, then, while thou hast breath, place thy trust in
this death ; place confidence in nothing else ; to this
death commit thyself wholly ; in this death array thy-
self all over ; mingle thy whole self in this death ; nail
thy whole self to it ; wrap thy whole self in it. And
if the Lord should seek to judge thee, say, 4 Lord, I
interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between
me and Thy judgment : on other terms I contend not
with Thee.’ And if He shall say, 4 1 will judge thee
because thou art a sinner,’ reply, 4 Lord, I interpose
between Thee and my sins the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ.’ If He shall say, s Thou hast deserved damna-
tion,’ reply, 4 Lord, I hold out the death of our Lord
J esus Christ between me and my ill deserts. I offer his
merits in lieu of the merits which I ought to have, and
which I have not.’ If He shall say that He is wrath
with thee, reply, 4 Lord, I hold between me and Thy
wrath the death of my Lord Jesus Christ.’ ”

What I have just said to you holds also another
caution, which is this, never to lower in the apprehension
of your people any Truth, but to try to raise the
appreciation of the other Truths, which may have been
either overlooked through carelessness, or undervalued
through ignorance of the relations, in which all Truths
stand to one another.

a See Sermon on Justification by Faith only, by Rev. C. H.
Davis, p. 23.

125

And this fact of the close connexion of the different
parts of Truth with one another reminds me of another
most important direction.

One of the best ways of testing the soundness of any
process of reasoning is to apply it not only to the one
case in hand, but to others. It is possible that it may
be an effective weapon of offence, not only against what
you wish to discredit, but also against a Truth you
hold to be most precious.

Thus you may be tempted to use and rely upon an
argument against Sacramental grace, which some
champion of a deeper Negation may apply with equal
force against the Doctrine of the Incarnation ; or you
may disparage the first centuries, in order to discredit
the authority of the teaching of the Church, and you
may discover, when too late, that you have led him,
whose doubts you have thus raised, to count as naught
the all-important acknowledgment of the Church of
those centuries, that the teaching of Holy Scripture
was consentient with the expressions of the mind of
the Holy Spirit, as working in the Church at that time,
and so had this evidence to its being the Word of
God.

But above all, my Brethren, if you would thus, by
word be a faithful exponent of your Church’s teaching
both in private and public, it must be by daily prayerful
study of those same Scriptures. They have been pre-
served to you that you may read them, study them, pray
over them, learn them by heart, and minister them in
the fulness of the knowledge and love of them ; and
nothing, I am persuaded, would help you more to this

126

than faithfulness to your obligation to say the daily
Services.

Obedience to this rule is in itself a sacrifice of duty
to God, and it will in its blessed effects not end there.

Such a habit, and the earnest endeavour to fulfil the
ends of the appointment of the Ember seasons will
help you almost more than anything to realise the
marvellous force of all prayer, and the quickening power
which God has connected with communion with Him,
in His word.

But you have to teach not only by your words but
also by your lives.

Whatever you do, my brethren, watch earnestly
against the encroachment of a worldly spirit, the custom
of measuring your calling, its duties, and its privileges
by any mere worldly standard. If you do thus
measure them, I am bold to say that of all men the
most miserable must be the Clergy.

But there is a better and a wiser course. Our great
poet, John Keble, points it out to us. He says,

“ But chiefly ye should lift your gaze
Above the world’s uncertain haze,

And look with calm unwavering eye
On the bright fields beyond the sky,

Ye who your Lord’s commission bear,

His way of mercy to prepare :

Angels He calls ye : be your strife
To lead on earth an angel’s life.

And, if my Rev. Brethren, you do as he bids you, if you
thus value the functions of your office by the standard
of the Gospel, you will both draw a large blessing into
your own souls, and also impart what you receive to

127

others, and this especially by the constraining power
of a holy, consistent life.

Such a life has always been a most powerful teacher,
but at the present day it is the only teacher that can
reach large masses of our countrymen.

And when these masses see amongst them a devoted
Clergy — Laymen spending their time, their money, and
their best powers in acts of self-denying charity —
women giving themselves up to those ministrations
which none but faithful, loving, sympathising women
can discharge, they are brought to confess that these
have something which they lack, and which they begin
to desire to have; and then come conversions, and
in-gatherings to the Church, and the building up of
converts in the faith, and the fruits of the Holy Ghost
in their renewed lives.

This is a glimpse only, my Brethren, but a very
cheering one, of a bright and a glorious vision, in
which every one of us, if we are true men, may indulge.
This is a result of Home Missions, in which we may
all, by our ministrations, whether of alms or of prayers,
or of personal service, have our part.

There are very many other things on which I should
like to speak to you, and that out of a full heart, but
I must not claim your attention much longer, and all I
would now add is more of personal concern to myself.

Thus I should be untrue to my own most sincere
feelings if I did not, thank you all for much Statementabout
ready co-operation and forbearance, as I have Myself-
already thanked some of you for many and very valu-
able official services.

128

And here I feel that circumstances make it almost
needful for me to add that if, in my appointments to
Stalls in the Cathedral, or to the important office of
Rural Dean, I have not always selected those of my
Clergy who are most at one with me in all matters, I
have not thus acted with a view, as I am told it has
been reported, of tampering with their convictions.

If I had done so, I should have felfc that I could only
have failed, as I should have deserved to do, in such a
base policy.

But, on the other hand, I own that I have not done
this without some motives.

I have thus been enabled to give definite expression
to my conviction that in most things, in, for example,
almost all the Truths of pure Theology we are agreed,
and that a sense of exclusion from any opportunities
of serving their Church only irritates honest minds,
and to some extent disables even a brotherly heart
from appreciating the bonds of unity.

I have also felt, that as I have ever urged you to
act with consideration for any shortcomings in Faith
and Practice of your parishioners, I was the more
bound not to deal in a different spirit with any of
you, but to show that I accept the saying of S.
Augustine,3 in its fullest meaning, “ Melius est dubitare
de occultis, quam litigare de incertis.”

There is also another claim that many of you have
upon my thanks.

During the late excitement it came to my know-
ledge, that not a few of you wished to give me some

R S. Aug. de Gen. ad Lit., 8, c. 3.

129

assurance that you did not share in the suspicions,
insinuations, and charges so very rife. But I have, as
far as possible, discouraged all such expressions of
confidence in me.

It is not, my Brethren, that I do not value any
token of affection from my Clergy and Laity, but it is
that I disapprove of such things in all but the most
exceptional cases, and for these reasons : —

Words are often used in these addresses, whether of
approval or disapproval, which go beyond or fall short
of the convictions of some of those who sign them.

Then, again, by the use of these words the Clergy
may get into collision with some of their parishioners
through misapprehension; and further, conscientious
people are greatly embarrassed in their choice of one
of the two alternatives, the seeming not to agree in
the object, or to express agreement in a way they
cannot quite justify to their consciences.

I, therefore, thank you most cordially, my Brethren,
for your silence, and I assure you that I have not
misconstrued it.

And having thus expressed my dislike to all these
kinds of addresses, I will only say that I will do to
you, as I would be done by, and that it must be a
most extreme case in which, I will not say, I shall
encourage, but rather in which I shall not endeavour
to discourage your parishioners from marking in any
such way any part of your teaching or conduct.

Nor would I have you suppose that it is only by
way of public protest or address that you could have
obtained an explanation from me of any statement of
mine which distressed any sincere Churchman.

130

I have certainly failed to convey to you a correct
impression of my conception of the relations which
exist between a Bishop and those over whom he is set,
if I have given you any cause for forming such a
conclusion.

Any communications made to me, which have not
borne the mark of a very dictatorial or captious spirit,
have, I hope, always received that attention which was
due to them ; and I am not prepared to raise the
question whether those, who feel at liberty to give
themselves a large extension to the meaning of their
Church’s teaching, should not think it right that
their Bishop should also have the same freedom.

At any rate if I have failed in not only sanctioning
but in encouraging such confidential intercourse with
any of you, I very much regret it.

And even now possibly some of you may have
expected from me a fuller exposition than I have given
of the teaching of our Church, as an answer to any
complaints which have been publicly made.

If this be so I must, in excuse, say that I have not
read any part of these public proceedings which has not
been forced upon me by some private communication
from some of yourselves ; and that in so doing I have
been acting upon a general, and, I believe a wise rule.

I feel sure that many persons say things under the
excitement of the moment, which they afterwards pray
God to forgive them for having said ; and I know well,
also, that I am too much encompassed with infirmity
to trust myself always to think of, and to act towards
those, who have so offended, in a spirit of charity, and

131

not, perhaps, to feel some slight wish that the words of
the poet may be fulfilled in their case —

yXwcro-p uaraia tflpia 7rpo(TTpi(3eTai ,

And so I am content not to know these things, and to
feel sure that anything which really requires notice
will be brought before me in some other and less
public way.

Be, however, this as it may, I have not from any
dishonest motive kept back anything from you, God
knoweth.

And as I have spent now nearly thirty years of my
life in this Diocese, I trust that none of those who
have known me so long can require this assurance.

They, at any rate, know that if my dearest friend
and predecessor had discovered this taint in my
character, he would not have trusted me as he did.

No man, I am confident, owes more to others — some
his seniors, some his contemporaries, some his juniors
— than I do ; but he who seems to have been specially
charged with the gifts of God’s good Providence for
me, was your late Bishop.

It is to him, under God, that I owed my connection
with Merton College, with my parish of S. Peter’s,
Oxford, and with your Cathedral ; and he it was who
on his death-bed advised that the burden of his office
should be laid on me.

Though I was lacking in almost every point that so
distinguished him above his fellows, he was (unac-
countably to me) led to guide me and to trust me, and
to make me his fellow worker and a sharer in his
counsels ; and nothing, I can truly say, more helps me

132

to act cautiously, calmly, considerately, charitably,
faithfully to my trust, loyally to my Church, aXrjOamiv
zv aya7T^,a and a Svvarov fizra ttcivtojv avOpdjTruv eiptivEvuv,h
than the recollection of him and his Episcopate.

It is not, I trust, my habit to speak of myself, and,
you must forgive me for having to-day broken through
my rule, especially as I have only allowed myself to
state what it seemed to me, that those over whom I
have, by the Grace and Providence of God, been set,
had a claim on me to say, and silence about which
might have been misunderstood.

I now commend myself to your prayers, and I am
ready to give you the Apostolical Benediction.

a Eph. iv. 15. b Rom. xii. 18.

APPENDIX

BENEFICED CLERGYMEN IN THE DIOCESE, WHO HAVE
DIED SINCE AUGUST, 1864.

Page 8, a.

Name.

1864.

Benefice.

John Gilderdale

William Edward Brendon

1865.

Henry Austen

Prebendary Robert Moore

William Byard Dalby

Thomas Hyde Ripley

William Allford

John Guthrie

Alexander James William Morrison

Charles Turner

Richard Storks Eaton

Croshie Morgell

William Dodge

Barton Bouchier

1866.

William Samler Hadley

Robert Salkeld

Thomas James

Samuel Broomhead Ward

Dacre Clemetson

William Cookson

Evan Davies

James Acland Templer

Alfred Cox

Arthur Anstey

> 1867.

George Frederick St. John

Sidney Henry Lear

George Mullins

Stourton Caundle.

West Grimstead cum Plaitford

Tarrant Keynstone.

Wimhorne S. Giles.

Zeals S. Martin.

Tockenham Week & Wootton Bassett
Folke and North Wootton.

Caine.

Broad Town.

Holt.

Compton Abbas West
Knoyle, East.

Fifehead Neville.

Fonthill Bishop.

Compton Abbas.

Fontmell Magna
Lillington.

TefFont Evias.

Chilcombe.

Broad Hinton.

Dorchester All Saints.

Piddletown.

Askerswell.

Handley.

Manston.
Chalfield Magna.

STATEMENT OF SERVICES, &c.

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DIOCESAN TRAINING SCHOOL STATISTICS*

Date.

Students in
Residence, j

Students
Classed for
Certificates. !

Government
Grant for Stu-
dents Classed.

Total Govern-
ment Grant for
the Year.

Cost of Training
School to Dio-
cesan Board of
Education.

£ 8.

s. d.

1861

808

1827 1

311

1 84

1862

807

1914 8

180

4 3“

1863

798

1920 16

1864

797

1446 18

61 '

0 0

1865

715

1447 3

180

0 0

1866

698

1237 1

250

0 0

Fees paid by
Students or
their Patrons.

£ 8. d.

40 0 0
32 0 0
15 6 6
315 0 0
181 0 0
230 0 0

Supply op Students to the Training School prom

Date.

Diocese of

Other

Total.

Sarum.

Winchester.

Bath and Wells.

Exeter.

Dioceses.

1863

Wilts 13]
Dorset 6 j

1“

1864

Wilts 7 }
Dorset 10 j

\ 17

1865

Wilts 6 1
Dorset 2 J

\ 8

1866

Wilts 7 )
Dorset 4 J

130

Supply of Mistresses (Trained for Two Years) from the Training School.

Date.

Diocese of

Other

Total.

Sarum.

Winchester.

Bath and Wells.

Exeter.

Dioceses.

1863

Wilts 111
Dorset 5 J

l16

1864

Wilts 3 j
Dorset 10 J

j- 13

1865

Wilts 10]
Dorset 7 j

117

1866

Wilts 5 j
Dorset 1 J

\ 6

120

The following statistics of Schoolmistresses trained at Salisbury, and now employed in the
Dioceses of Winchester and Salisbury, have been kindly furnished by the Rev. Thomas Bacon,
Secretary of the Winchester Training School: —

Mistresses Trained at
Salisbury.

Highly

Commended.

Quite

Satisfactory.

Not

Commended.

Disapproved.

No. Reported.

General Knowledge

Teaching Power

Discipline

Character

Demeanour

Mr. Bacon has also been kind enough to furnish us with some of the special reports of
Schoolmistresses which he has received. Two are subjoined : — “ I am thoroughly satisfied in all
respects. Never were there better Mistresses. The Schools are infinitely more efficient now
than in the old days with an untrained and expensive Master.” “ We have had four trained
Mistresses, three from Sarum. With one exception (not from Sarum) they have given us great
satisfaction.” Mr. Bacon adds : — “ There is not one adverse opinion in the cases of the Sarum
trained Mistresses.”

PARISH SCHOOLS.

Parishes in which Day Schools

1861.

1864.

1867.

449+

274

451+

312

466

302

Parishes in which Evening Schools

* In comparing these figures, it is to be borne in mind that in 1864 the reduced system of
Government Grants (vide R C § 101) came into operation. For economical and sanitary reasons
the Training School Committee determined to reduce the number of Students.

1861, 505 A The only way in which this discrepancy can be accounted for is
1864. 509 > through the imperfect returns made under this head to the
.1867, 511 ) Bishop’s Visitation queries.

j Inspectors’ Return^
of Day Schools in"

136

WORKS COMPLETED.

CHURCHES CONSECRATED.

Dorset to

(1861 10

. 13

\ 1864.

1867, 7, viz., at

Chardstock, S. Andrew Holme, S. John Evan.
Longfleet, S. Mary Winterborne Zelstone

Symondsbury,S. Peter S. Mary
Broadoak, S. Paul Wool, Holy Rood

CHURCHES

Dorset to j 1864!".'.’.*.’.’.” 13
1867, 9, viz., at

Batcornbe, S. Mary Broadmayne.S.Mart.

Bincombe, H. Trinity Chetnole, S. Peter

Corfe Mullen, S. Nidi. Okeford Fitzpaine, H.
Gussage, All Saints Rood
Parkstone, S. Peter Thornford,S.M.Mag.

Wilts to |

1867, 9, viz., at

Warminster, S. John E. Fonthill Gifford, H.T.
Bradenstoke,S. Mary Rowde, S. Peter
Compton Bassett, S. Semley, S. Leonard
Swithun Sarum,S.Edm. f&J.

Dean, West, S. Mary Chapmanslade,SS. P.

RESTORED.

Wilts to

(1861 16

( 1864 18

1867, 8, viz., at

Caine, S. Mary Bemerton, S. Andrew

Codford, S. Peter Bower Chalke, Holy
Alvediston, S. Mary Trinity

Bromham, S. Nicholas Bradford-on-Avon,
Ogborne, S. George Holy Trinity

East Kennet
Caundle Bishop
Cann S. Rumbold
Burcombe
Ogborne S. George

Netherbury

Bedwin Parva
Bothenhampton
Beer Regis
Broad Hinton
Cherhill
Chilfrome

CHURCHYARDS.

Piddle Hinton Bradenstoke

Radipole Broadmayne

Symondsbury, S. Peter Fonthill Gifford
Warminster, S. John Fordington
Evangelist Holme, East

Keevil

Manningford Bruce
Mere Cemetery
Piddletown
Dean, West

SCHOOLS.

Bettiscombe Bramshaw Coate Piddletown

PARSONAGE HOUSES.

Collingbourne Ducis
Compton Abbas, West
Fisherton Anger
Fifehead Neville
Ham
Mere

Shaston S. James
South Newton
Staverton
Steeple
Stoke Abbas
Thornford

Tokenham Week
Warmwell

Winterborne Houghton
Winterborne Monkton
Wootton Bassett
Zeals

WORKS IN PROGRESS.

FOR CHURCH BUILDING AND RESTORATION.

Aldbourne
Ansty
Avebury
Broad Windsor
Ditto, Chapel of
Cannings, Bishop
Cannings, All
Cheverell Magna
Compton Abbas
Dorchester, H. Trin.

The

Fonthill Bishop
Gillingham, Chapel

Heytesbury
Highway
Hinton Martel
Idmiston
Kinson

Lul worth, West
Mappowder

Cathedral.

Melcombe Regis,
of Chapel of Ease
Milton Abbas
Milton, West
Monkton Farley
Orcheston S. Mary
Piddlehinton
Poxwell

Sarum, S. Edmund
(New Church)

Sarum, S. Thomas
Shaston, S. James
Stapleford
Stower Row
Sutton Yeny
Thorncombe
Westbury

Weymouth, H. Trinity
Winterborne Earls
Winterborne Gunner

CHURCHYARDS.

Stourton Caundle Wisliford Magna Puncknowle Kinson

Beaminster
Bere Regis
Caine

Chickerell, West
Chittoe

Compton Abbas

SCHOOLS.

Chisledon Fisherton Anger

Farley Grovely

PARSONAGE HOUSES.
Fontmell Magna Lul worth, West

Heywood Plaitford

Hook

Knighton, West
Symondsbury

Stoke, East
Lillington

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPECTORS’ PAPERS IN DORSET.— 1864.

£■3

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SundaySchoolS;
on Books. j

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Day Schools
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Returns incomplete, majority of Schools being closed through illness. f No r eturns. j. Appointed Rural Dean too late in the year to inspect.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPECTORS’ PAPERS IN WILTS.— 1864.

138

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Return incomplete. | No return.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPECTORS’ PAPERS IN DORSET.— 1865.

139

2s O

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jo jaqmn^j

118

111

300

331

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243

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No Return T Inspection omitted. $ Inspection omitted by Bishop’s leave from illness.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPECTORS’ PAPERS IN WILTS. — 1865.

140

Night

Schools.

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Inspectors.

Rev. Prebendary Renaud...

( Rev. E. Luard I

(Rev. J. P. Messenger... )

Rev. J. N. Peill

Rev. Tupper Carey

Rev. E. Hill

Rev. C. Lawford

Rev. Prebendary Morrice

Rev. W. H. Teale

Rev. H. S. C. Crook

( Rev. E. Peacock 1

( Rev. E. Meade j

Rev. H. M. Fletcner

Rev. B. C. Dowding

Rev. J. D. Hodgson

( Rev. E. H. Bucker field 1
( Rev. J. F. Turner j

Rural Deaneries.

Archdeaconry of Sarum.

1. Wilton

2. Amesbury, 1st Portion

3. Ditto, 2nd Portion

4. Chalke. 1st Portion

5. Ditto, 2nd Portion

6. Wylye. 1st Portion

7. Ditto, 2nd Portion

Archdeaconry of Wilts.

8. Potterne, 1st Portion ...

9. Ditto, 2nd Portion

10. Ditto, 3rd Portion

11. Avebury, 1st Portion ...

12. Ditto, 2nd Portion

13. Marlborough, 1st Por.

14. Ditto, 2nd Portion

Inspection omitted by leave of the Bishop.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPECTORS’ PAPERS IN DORSET.— 1866.

141

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No Return from illness of Inspector. f No Return. t No Return from special circumstances.

SUMMARY OF SCHOOL INSPEC TORS PAPERS’ IN WILTS.— 1866.

142

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143

Page 16, a.

Bishopstowe, Torquay, 2nd February, 1867.

Reverend and Dear Sir, — I am anxious to bring before your notice
the claims of the “ Curates’ Augmentation Fund,” and to ask for your
support in furtherance of a measure so important to the welfare of a large
number of our Brethren in the Ministry.

I request you to commend the Society to the consideration of the Laity
in your Parish, and to seek for their active co-operation in carrying out
its object, which is briefly this, ‘ to give to the working Curate, while at
work, an Augmentation or Stipend of, if possible, £100 per annum, over
and above the Stipend which he receives from other sources.

One strong ground upon which you may claim their assistance is, that
“ upon no principle of justice,” (I am quoting from the Report of the
Provisional Council appointed at Lambeth Palace in February, 1866),
“ can the entire obligation of supporting Assistant Clergy, when required
by an increased population, be thrown upon resident Incumbents able and
willing to do their duty ; yet, that the Beneficed Clergy, whose average
income is only £246 a year, contribute from their own resources no less a
sum than £400,000 a year for the maintenance of Assistant Curates, and
that the Laity, therefore, as representing the increased population, ought
to bear the greater part of this burden,”

How to bring about this object, whether from the pulpit, or through an
organized Parochial Association, I leave to your own judgment.

I would here, however, draw your attention to the following passage
taken from the same Report: “while the Laity may well be called upon
to assist with their purses, and in promoting local gatherings, the Clergy
can at least, through their pulpits, make known to their congregations the
purposes and aim of the fund, and give to their flocks the acceptable
opportunity of presenting their contributions through the medium of the
offertory.”

I am, Rev. and Dear Sir,

Your faithful Friend and Brother,

H. Exeter.

Page 19, a.

We, the undersigned Clergy, and Churchwardens make it our earnest
request, that your Lordship will kindly take into consideration the
desirableness of holding your Visitations, and those of the Archdeacon, in
Wimborne Minster ; the Minster Church in Wimborne, being eminently
calculated for such a purpose, and the locality being equally, or far more
convenient to us, than that of Blandford.

Page 59, a.

The Canon of St. Augustine is “Quod universa tenet Ecclesia, nec
conciliis institutum, sed semper retentum est, non nisi auctoritate Aposto-
lica traditum rectissime creditur.” — Aug. contr. Don., lib. iv. c. 24.

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146

Page 75, a.

“ The remarkable series of questions and answers which forms the con-
cluding portion of the present Church Catechism is, we need hardly say,
universally believed to have been the work of Bishop Overall. And
certainly, if there is anywhere to he found in the English language an
epitome of Catechetical instruction, which may he said to hear the decided
impress of those Scholastic and Sacramentarian tenets to which this
Prelate is known to have been attached, it is the one now before us.
From first to last it is all about the Sacraments. Of the thirteen ques-
tions and answers of which the Catechism had previously consisted jive, it
is true, were already devoted to the subject of Baptism, and constituted, no
doubt, a strong Sacramentarian element. But still, it might justly he said,
that, up to the year 1604, its pervading character was wow-Sacramentarian,
and to a large extent Scriptural ; inasmuch as it contained, besides a hriei
analysis of the so-called Apostles’ Creed, a practical and somewhat detailed
exposition of the moral code of the Jewish law, so arranged as to occupy
a more prominent position, and a much more extended space, than that
which was devoted to the subject of the Sacraments.

“ Now, however, in consequence of the addition of this scholastic
Romanizing adjunct, it is plain that the pervading character of our
national Catechetical Formulary has been very materially modified. In
its original state the Sacramental element, however distinctly enunciated,
was nevertheless subordinate, both in prominence and extent, to the
Scriptural. But now the case is, in this respect at least, not merely
altered hut actually reversed. Since the revision of 1604 Sacramentalism,
it must he allowed, most decidedly predominates. It has constituted, from
that time, the basis of the entire fabric ; and is rendered conspicuous,
not only by the precision with which it is expressed, hut also by the
ostensible importance given to it, as embracing so large a portion of this
most important Formulary. Out of twenty-jive questions of which the
Catechism now consists, not less than sixteen relate exclusively to the
nature and efficacy of the Sacraments ; and, in the part which was last
super-added, the subject is expounded with a regularity of arrangement,
and a critical minuteness of exposition, which far exceeds in effect the
previous explanation of the Creed and the Ten Commandments ; and
which is especially suited to impress the tender minds of children, with a
sense of the supreme importance of Sacramental observances.” — “ Revision
of Book of Common Prayer,” by J. C. Fisher, M.A., second edition, pp.
220-222.

Page 78, a.

“ They re-inserted the Rubric, it is true ; but they re-inserted it in an
altered form, omitting the words ‘ real and essential — obviously the
most material, as to doctrine, in the whole passage — and substituting the
word * corporal in their place.

“ Now mark the inevitable consequence of this proceeding. It is not as
if the Rubric in question had been inserted for the first time upon this
occasion. In that case, it would clearly have amounted to nothing more
than a simple repudiation of the so-called ‘ corporal’ Presence, without any
implied recognition of another and perhaps not less noxious form of doctrine.
But when we come to consider the history of the whole transaction, and
when the Rubric in question is found to be merely the Rubric of 1552 re-
inserted, with one significant alteration only — namely, the substitution of
the word ‘ corporal in the place of £ real and essential ,’ as above
described, the case, it is clear, is wholly altered. Such a substitution,

147

deliberately and designedly made, must necessarily be considered as in-
volving nothing less than a positive, though tacit recognition of the ‘ real
and essential,’ as distinguished from the ‘ corporal’ presence. — “ Revision
of the Book of Common Prayer,” by J. C. Fisher, M.A., pp. 296-7

Page 81, a.

Bishop Geste, the author of the 28th Article, thus explains it : —
“Greeting in ye Lord.

“ Right Honourable — I am verye sorye yt you are so sicke, God make
you whole, as it is my desyer and prayer. I wold have seen you er this,
accordinge to my duetye and good will, but when I sent to knowe whether
I might see you it was often answered yt you were not to be spoken with.

“ I suppose you have heard how ye Bisshop of Glocestre [ i.e . Cheney]
found him selue greeved with ye plasynge of this adverbe onelye in this
article, * The Body of Christ is gyven taken and eaten in ye Supper after
an heavenly and spirituall maner only’ bycause it did take awaye ye
presence of Christis Bodye in ye Sacrament, and privily noted me to
take his part therein, and yeasterday in myn absence more playnely
vouched me for ye same. Whereas betwene him and me, I told him
playnely that this word onelye in ye foresaied Article did not exclude ye
presence of Christis Body from the Sacrament, but only ye grossenes
and sensiblenes in ye receavinge thereof : For I saied vnto him though
he toolce Christis Bodye in his hand , receaved it with his mouthe, and
that corporally naturally reallye substantially and carnally as ye
doctors doo write, yet did lie not for all that see it, feale it, smell it, nor
tost it. And therefore I told him I wold speake against him herein, and
ye rather bycause ye article was of myn own pennynge. And yet I
wold not for all that denye therebye any thing that I had spoken for ye
presence. And this was ye some of our talke.

“ And this that I saied is so true by all sortes of men that even D.
Hardinge writeth ye same as it appeareth most evidently by his wordes
reported in ye Busshoppe of Salisburie’s [Jewel’s] booke pagina 325, wich
be these : ‘ Then ye maye saye yt in ye Sacrament His verye Bodye is
present yea really that is to saye, in deede, substantially that is in sub-
stance, and corporally carnally and naturally, by ye wich words is ment
that His verye Bodye His verye flesh and His verye human nature is there
not after corporall carnall or naturall wise, but invisibly unspeakably
supernaturally spiritually divinely and by waye unto Him onlye knowen.”
[The extract is here taken from Jewell’s, controversy with M. Harding,
Art. Y. Divis. v., p. 445, ed. P. S.]

“ This I thought good to write to your honour for mine owne purgation.
The Almighty God in Christ restore you to your old health, and longe
kepe you in ye same with encrease of vertue and honour.

“ Yours whole to his poore powr

“ Edm. Roffen.

“ To ye right honourable and his singler good friend
Sir Willm Cecil Knight Principall Secretaire to ye Queens Matie’”

Page 83, a.

“After all have communicated, it is presumed by the rubric that some of the
consecrated ‘ elements remain,’ which the Priest is commanded ‘ reverently’
to ‘ place’ on the table, and after the Lord’s Prayer, to say that which in
the Scotch Liturgy is placed between the consecration and administration,

148

and I think may properly be called the Prayer of Oblation ; in which God
is desired mercifully to accept this our Sacrifice of Praise and Thanks-
giving ; which words, as they may he understood of the whole service, so
they may likewise he referred to the Eucharistic Elements, part of which,
as was observed, are supposed still to remain and stand upon the table.
As, for my part, I cannot hut take this 4 Sacrifice of Praise and Thanks-
giving’ in its most proper sense, in congruity with ancient liturgies, to
denote the symbols of Christ’s Body and Blood. . . . And it is by

virtue and in confidence of this Sacrifice, that we proceed to intercede that
not only we, hut 4 the whole Church, may receive remission of sins, and all
other benefits of His Passion,’ by the merits and death of Christ Jesus,
and through faith in His Blood, represented by the consecrated cup.” —
Johnson “ Prop. Oblation in the Holy Eucharist,” p. 86, Tracts vol. iv. 317.

Page 84, a.

44 Even in the Homilies in which we should naturally find the strongest
expression against the abuses, in antagonism to which the Beformation
was carried on, we find nothing hut what is in unison with the obvious
and literal interpretation of the Formularies. We find the Eucharist
defined by its inward and outward parts as 4 the due receiving of Christ’s
Blessed Body and Blood under the form of Bread and Wine.’ We read
of 4 receiving our Saviour and Maker in His Blessed Sacrament .* It
is not said His Grace, His Virtue, or 4 what is equivalent’ to His Body and
Blood, but Himself, Christ our Maker. — (Horn. Good Friday, p. 455, ed.
S.P.C.K.) Again, 4 Thou hast received His Body, to have within thee
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for to dwell with thee, and
comfort thee with their presence.’ 4 Thou hast received His Body to endow
thee with everlasting righteousness.’ — (Serm. of Resurrection, p. 476.)
4 What an unkindness should it he, when our Saviour Christ is come to
us to dwell within us as our guest, to drive Him from us, to force Him
violently out of our souls.’ 4 Let us take heed we come not with our sins
unexamined into this presence of our Lord and Judge.’ — P. 496. In the
Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no hare sign, no untrue
figure of a thing absent.’ (Horn, of the Sacrament.) 4 Take . . . this

lesson . . . that when thou goest up to the reverend communion, to he

satisfied with spiritual meats, thou look up with faith upon the Holy Body
and Blood of thy God, thou touch it with the mind, thou receive it with
the hand of thy heart, and thou take it fully into thy inner man.’ And
so, in a passage quoted in the Charge, 4 Dost thou neither fear God, the
maker of this feast, nor reverence His Christ, the refection and meat ?’”
— Theological Defence for the Bishop of Brechin, p. 146.

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION.

Page 85, b.

44 That the Church did not mean to abolish confession and absolution
(which she even regards as a sort of sacrament),* in general appears from
the Office of the Eucharist, and for the Visitation of the Sick, then drawn
up ; and from the powers conferred on Priests in the Ordination Services.
The Homilies, drawn up in 1562, only declared this confession and abso-
lution not essential generally to the pardon of sin,f hut this does not

Homily on Common Prayer and Sacraments, f Homily of Repentance, p. 2.

149

militate against its desirableness and benefit, which the Church never
denied.* We only disused the canon * omnis utriusque sexus,’ made by
the Synod of Lateran in 1215, and for good reasons restored the practice
of confession to the state it was in previously, when it was not enjoined at
a particular time every year. The alteration was merely in a matter of
changeable discipline.” — Sir W. Palmer on the Church, t. i., p. ii., c. vii.,
p. 519.

“ By conferring, as she has done in that most solemn rite of Ordination,
the power to “remit” and ‘retain’ sins upon every newly ordained
minister within her communion, she has rendered confession the natural —
nay, the almost unavoidable result, of the position in which such minister
finds himself placed : a logical necessity, in fact, from which, if he really
possesses a logically constituted mind, and a thorough determination
withal to fulfil conscientiously the duties of his calling, he will find it
difficult, or rather impossible, to divest himself.” — “ Revision of Book of
Common Prayer,” by J. C. Fisher, M.A., p. 79.

“ The power, to ‘ remit’ and * retain’ sins, conferred upon the clergyman
at his ordination, is authenticated, beyond a doubt, by the very terms of
the form prescribed for his directiou, when afterwards called upon to
exercise it. ‘ I absolve thee from all thy sins’ is most appropriate
language in the mouth of one to whom it has been said, as upon Divine
warrant — ‘ Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven.’ Nay, how
could such an one fail to use it, and yet be faithful to his solemn trust !
And these, accordingly, are the very words, which the officiating minister
is directed to use in the Office for the ‘ Visitation of the Side.’ The
Rubric, prefixed to this formula, directs, that — ‘ the sick person shall be
moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience
troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession, the Priest
shall absolve him, (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort :’ —

‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all
sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine
offences. And by his authority committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins,
in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen/

In these words we have a virtual assumption of the very same power of
absolving, which had been previously conferred by the terms of the Ordi-
nation Service ; and that, not merely from such special offences, as might
at the time press more heavily upon the conscience of the penitent; but,
from all his sins.” — “ Revision of Book of Common Prayer,” by J. C.
Fisher, M.A., pp. 54, 55.

“ We know our Church’s teaching, namely, that after confession of the
penitent, “ Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his
wickedness and live ; and hath given power and commandment (the words
imply a very special and peculiar power as well as commandment) to His
ministers to declare and pronounce to His people, being penitent, the abso-
lution and remission of their sins; He pardoneth and absolveth” (at the
very moment when His minister, so empowered, and commanded, pro-
nounces the blessed word) “ all them that truly repent and unfeignedly
believe His holy gospel.” Our Church, therefore, says that all such sincere

* National Synod of Ireland, a.d. 1634, Canon 64. Confession of Augsburg, pars i.
art. xi. De Confessione ; p. ii. art iv. ; Apologia Confessionis, vi. ; Articuli Smal-
cald. pars'iii. art. viii. ; and Luther's Catechismus Minor.

150

and faithful penitents may have the comfort of knowing, that God’s
pardon of their sins has been actually given to them; that they receive ti
when they receive the solemn assurance of it from God’s own minister
empowered and commanded to pronounce “ the word of reconciliation”
over them.” — Bp. of Exeter’s Letter to Dean of Exeter, p. 11.

Page 64, a.

“ All that you ascribe to the office of Christ’s faithful ministers, is, in
Christ’s name, and by His authority, to do what your verger is competent
to do — ‘to declare’ to the penitent (what few who call themselves
Christians can need to be informed) ‘ that the riches of God’s mercies in
Christ are inexhaustible — that if we confess our sins and turn to him,
&c. &c.’ ” — Bishop of Exeter’s Letter to Dean of Exeter, p. 12.

“ When He said, ‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost,’ He added ‘ Whose-
soever SINS YE REMIT THEY ARE REMITTED UNTO THEM, AND WHOSE-
SOEVER sins ye retain they are retained.’ Thus He delivered to
the Apostles, and they were to transmit to their successors, and they again
to future generations, one after another, authority to pronounce, and by
pronouncing to convey, remission of sin, on condition of faith and re-
pentance ; that a fountain of mercy and consolation might be kept open
in His Church, as a pledge of pardon before God, through the atoning
merits of the Blood of Christ. Such was to be the privilege of a holy
Priesthood, consecrated by the laying on of hands. In this, as in all other
ministrations — by and in Holy Baptism, by and in the Holy Eucharist,
by and in the office of absolution, public or private, upon confession of sin,
with hearty sorrow, and a declaration of belief in the sacred Trinity, the
Christian Church exercises her power from Jesus Christ, as the channel
of His grace. This ‘ Ministry of Reconciliation’ is conferred upon those
who are ordained to it by the Church in the words of Christ, ‘ Whose-
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins
ye retain, they are retained.’ ” — “ Messiah,” pp. 782-784.

“ Proinde vicem suam Christus Apostolis commisit, magis autem
prsecavens, ne aliter quis a criminibus relaxaretur, aut quis sibi
crederet peccata remitti quam Spiritus Sanctus interne decernat. In
virtute Spiritus Sancti authoritatem invisibilem prsestat.” “Ordinate
autem factum est, ut ad remissionem et retentionem peccatorum pnecedat
largitio Spiritus Sancti, ut nunquam aliter credantur peccata remitti
aut detin eri ab homine uncto, nisi prout utrumque aut alterum
Spiritus Sanctus effecerit. Quoniam non est unctus homo, qui remittit vel
retinet vincula peccatorum, sed qui de supernis solus novit incognita per
homines hominum corda, et quanta contritione et attritione corde terantur
indecepte cognoscit. Falluntur quam plurimi, sibi remitti peccata
gaudentes, cum verbum absolutionis, et manuum impositionem acceperunt
ab his qui sacerdotio potiuntur, quibus Spiritus Sanctus desuper non
indulsit, quoniam vidit absconditum in corde criminosi defectum, quern
qui praeerat in terra penitus non aspexit, aut forte de Spiritus Sancti
licentia debito plus prsesumpsit. Trutinare justis ponderibus hominum
scelera atque conscientias ipsorum mole contritas, non hominibus datum,
sed Sibi reservavit Altissimus.” — Simon de Cassia, Gesta Sal., lib. xiv. p.
466. Cit. the Author of “ The Messiah,” p. 783.

“ Non est igitur potestas peccata suo arbitrio remittendi, (quod tantum
Jus Christo homini concessum est) sed Annunciandi veniam, qua; Nathan i

etiam ad Davidem, et Prophetis aliis mandata fuerat.” — Bp. Cosms’ Notes,
printed in Nicholls on the Common Prayer, Addit. Notes, folio ed., p. 19.

“ The Church of England, howsoever it holdeth not confession and
absolution sacramental, that is made unto and received from a Priest, to
be so absolutely necessary, as that without it there can be no Remission of
Sins ; yet by this place it is manifest, what she teacheth concerning the
Virtue and Force of this sacred Action. The Confession is commanded to
be special, the Absolution is the same that the antient Church, and the
present Church of Rome useth. What would they have more? . . .

Our if he feel his conscience troubled, is no more than his si inveniat
peccata ; for if he be not troubled with Sin, what needs either Confession
or Absolution ? Venial Sins that separate not from the Grace of God,
need not so much to trouble a man’s conscience. If he hath committed
any mortal sin, then we require confession of it to a Priest, who may give
him, upon his true Contrition and Repentance, the benefit of Absolution,
which takes effect according to his Disposition that is absolved ; and,
therefore, the Church of Home adds to the form of absolution, ‘ Quantum
in me est, et de jure possum, Ego te absolvo not absolutely lest the
Doctrine should get head, that some of their ignorant people believe, that
be the party confessed never so void of contrition, the very act of absolu-
tion forgives him his sins. The truth is, that in the Priests’ Absolution
there is the true Power and Virtue of Forgiveness, which will most cer-
tainlv take effect ‘ Nisi ponitur obex,' as in Baptism.” — Bp. Overall, id.

p. 62.

The Lutheran pastors ask those who come to Confession, and to receive
the benefit of Absolution, whether they believe that Jesus Christ is acting
through them.

“ Occulta autem confessio, quse modo celebratur, etsi probari ex scriptura
non possit, miro modo tamen placet, et utilis, imo necessaria est, nec vellem
earn non esse, imo gaudeo earn esse in Ecclesia Christi.” — Luther de Captiv.
Babyl. opp. T. ii. fol. 292.

“ Although of old, while the fervour of piety was greater than it is now,
public confession, and penance were in use among Christians, nevertheless,
in consideration of our weakness, it has pleased God to make known to
the faithful, through the Church, the sufficiency of a private confession
made to a priest.” — Leibnitz on Confession.

“ Nor are we left at a loss to know the rule by which Cyprian imagines
the Deity will act on such occasions. For in another place* of the same
Epistle he says, ‘ Neither do we prejudice the judgment of God, Who, if
he finds the penitence of the sinner full and satisfactory, will ratify that
which we have decreed. But if any one have cheated us by a shew of
penitence, God, Who will not be mocked, and Who knows the heart, will
determine from matters which have escaped our eye, and rectify the deci-
sion of His ministers.’ There are several other passages in Cyprian
carefully referring to God as the fountain of all pardon, however He may
make His priests the conditional instruments of conveying it.”f — Blunt
on the Early Fathers, p. 115.

“ Can any man be so unreasonable as to imagine, that when our Saviour,
in so solemn a manner, having first breathed upon His disciples, thereby
conveying and insinuating the Holy Ghost into their hearts renewed unto

Ep. lii. §18. f Sea De Lapsis, §§ xvi. xvii., Testimoniorum iii. c. xxviii.

152

them, or rather confirmed that glorious commission, &c., whereby He
delegated to them an authority of binding and loosing sins upon earth, &c.
Can any one think, I say, so unworthily of our Saviour as to esteem these
words of His for no better than compliments ? Therefore, in obedience to
His gracious will, and as I am warranted and enjoined by my Holy
Mother, the Church of England, I beseech you that, by your practice and
use, you will not suffer that commission, which Christ hath given to His
ministers, to be a vain form of words without any sense under them.
When you feel yourselves charged and oppressed, &c., have recourse to
your spiritual physician, and freely disclose the nature and malignancy of
your disease, &c.

“ And come not to him only with such a mind as you would go to a
learned man, as one that can speak comfortable things to you ; but as to
one that hath authority, delegated to him from God Himself, to absolve
and acquit you of your sins” — Chillingworth, § vii. Eel. of Prot.

The writer of some articles in the “ Eevue du Monde Catholique,” in the
months of February and March, 1866, admits “ That the widely-prevailing
custom of private confession is acting in the way of preventing secessions
to Eome, which he asserts are far less numerous of late years than they
used to be. The Eitual movement finds equally little favour in his sight.
It is a substitute which answers the purpose of fascinating those who
would otherwise be glad to exchange the dull routine of an ordinary
English service for the more gorgeous mode in which the Eoman offices
are performed. Whilst as regards the accusation of Mariolatry, he thinks
Dr. Pusey will have much to answer for, not only in deterring those who
are on the high road towards Eoman Catholicism, but also, and chiefly as
it would appear, in shaking the faith of those who have been brought up
under the system of the Eoman Church.” — “ Christian Eemembrancer,”
July, 1866, pp. 172, 173.

“ Jesus hath ‘ the keys of death and hell,’ and He can loose, whom He
pleaseth, by forgiving ; that is, absolving or unloosing the bonds of sin.
But, because He is now invisible and employed in Heaven to intercede for
us, before His departure He appointed His apostles to supply this place
by giving them commission, by a visible and external application of
this power to support the spirits of all true penitents until Himself should
come to ratify their Absolution. Upon which ground the Bishops and
Priests of the whole. Christian Church have ever used to absolve all that
truly repented ; and at this day it is retained in our Church. . . . Our

Church hath three forms of absolution in her public offices ; the first
Declaratory. . . . the second Petitionary in the Communion Service

. . . the third Judiciary in the Office for the Sick. . . . Though

we perform absolution in that sober, moderate, and useful manner, we do
not vary from the prime intention of Christ’s commission, and the practice
of Antiquity. Absolution was instituted by Jesus; and, if it have been
corrupted by men, we will cast away the corruptions, not the Ordinance
itself. Isa. lxvi. i. : Zech. ix. 12 ; Acts viii. 23 ; S. John xx. 22, 23. Bean
Comber. (A Companion to the Temple, p. 1, s. 4.)

“ Will not our Lord Christ, who has promised to own you, as His
children, when His ministers have admitted you into His Church by
Baptism, also disown you, when the same Ministers, acting in His name,
shall, by the same power of the Keys, shut you out of His Church ? For,
if you believe, that they receive you into Christ’s Church by Baptism, you
must also believe that they shut you out as effectually, by excommunica-
tion. In short, every Christian, when he is Baptized, is admitted into the

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Church upon a most solemn promise to live, as a Christian ought to do : if
he does not do so, those very Ministers who admitted him, are bound to
exhort, to rebuke, and to censure him ; and, if these methods will not do,
to excommunicate him ; that is, to cut him off from the Body of Christ
and from God’s favour and mercy ; not that he may be lost for ever, but
that he may see his sad condition, and repent, and be saved.” xvii. 17 ; 1
Cor. v. 1 — 6 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 1 — 4 ; 1 Tim. i. 20. Bishop Wilson. (Form
of Excommunication.)

“ The power of the Ministry of God translateth out of darkness into
glory ; it raiseth men from the earth, and bringeth God Himself down
from Heaven; by Blessing visible elements it maketh them invisible
Grace ; it giveth daily the Holy Ghost ; it hath to dispose of that Flesh
which was £ given for the life of the world,’ and that blood which was
poured out to redeem souls : when it poureth malediction on the heads of
the wicked, they perish ; when it revoketh the same, they revive. Oh,
wretched blindness, if we admire not so great power ; more wretched, if
we consider it aright, and notwithstanding imagine that any, but God, can
bestow it !” 1 Cor. iv. 1 ; 2 Cor. viii. 23 ; 1 Thess. v. 12, 13. Hooker.
(Eccl. Pol. B. v. ch. 62.) — “ The Gospel of S. Matthew” xvi. 19, illustrated
by Rev. J. Ford, M.A., Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral.

“ The difference that is between us and our adversaries in this whole
matter is not great, saving that it liketh well M. Harding to busy himself
with needless quarrels without cause. Three kinds of confession are ex-
pressed unto us in the Scriptures : the first made secretly unto God alone ;
the second openly before the whole congregation ; the third privately unto
our brother. Of the two former kinds there is no question. Touching
the third, if it be discreetly used, to the greater comfort and better satis-
faction of the penitent, without superstition or other ill, it is not in any
wise by us reproved. The abuses and errors set apart, we do no more
mislike a private confession than a private sermon.” — Bp. Jewel, Defence of
the Apology, Parker Society Edition, p. 351.

“ The Church of England hath authority this day by God’s Word to
bind and loose, as much as ever Christ gave any to his apostles ; and
by the same authority the same Church of England is able to bind, not
only M. Harding and his fellows, as Peter bound Simon Magus, or as
Paul bound Elymas the false prophet, but also the Pope himself, if he be
an open offender ; and, as S. Paul saith, is able to deliver him over unto
Satan ; and undoubtedly, being so bound in earth, he shall also stand
bound in heaven.

“ As for private confession, abuses and errors set apart, as it is said
before, we condemn it not, but leave it at liberty. And therein we may
seem to follow the advice of Charles the emperor in his late Interim ; for
thus he writeth : Confessio et peccatorum enumeratio, . . . ut non nimis
laxanda est, ita vicissim non nimis [ est ] astringenda.” — Bishop Jewel,
id., p. 362, 363.

THE REAL PRESENCE.

Page 86, a.

1. “ The Doctrine of the English Church and the Doctrine of the Real
Presence, as contained in the Fathers,” by E. B. Pusey, D.D. J. H. and
J. Parker.

2. “ On Eucharistical Adoration,” by the Rev. John Keble, M.A. J. H.
and J. Parker.

3. “ The Doctrine of the Real Presence.” 1855. J. H. Parker.

4. “ The Theological Defence for the Bishop of Brechin.” 1860. Masters.

154

“ Milner is obliged to confess that the genuine doctrine of the Church
of England is that of the Real Presence. He refers in proof to the
Catechism, Articles, Ritual and Homilies, and to Ridley, Nowell, Bilson,
Andrewes, Morton, Laud, Bramhall, &c., and to Cleaver, Bishop of
Chester, who says : ‘ The great object of our reformers was, whilst they
acknowledged the doctrine of the Real Presence, to refute that of Tran-
substantiation ; as it was afterwards to refute the notion of impanation
or consubstantiation. — Sermon, Nov. 25, 1787. See Milner’s Letters to
a Prebendary, let. viii. Hornyhold, another of their titular bishops,
admits that ‘ the doctrine of the Church of England’ in the Catechism
‘ expresses the real and substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood
in the Sacrament as fully as any Catholic can do : for if verily and indeed
be not the same as really and truly, and of as full force to exclude a mere
figurative presence, I confess I am yet wholly ignorant of the signification,
even of the most common words, and it will be impossible to know what
men mean, even when they deliver themselves in the plainest terms.’—
Real Principles of Catholics, p. 243, ed. 1749. Bossuet affirms that
even the Declaration against Transubstantiation leaves the English at
liberty to ‘believe that the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are really and
substantially present in the bread and in the wine immediately after
consecration.’ ” — Variat. xiv. 122. — Sir W. Palmer on the Church, v. i. p.
ii., c. vii. p. 531.

“ The Article in denying Transubstantiation does not condemn abso-
lutely all change of substance in any sense, but the particular change
called by the Romanists Transubstantiation, which supposes the bread to
cease to exist.

“ JE.G. If we do not take the term substance in the scholastic sense, as
distinguished from the accidents, and if the change is not corporal, or in
any sense carnal, but mystical or spiritual, or moral. Some change of
the bread and wine all orthodox Christians allow. Bishop Pearson says
truly that ‘ the /ueracrToixeicocrts of the Sacramental elements maketh them
not to cease to be of the same nature which before they were.’ — On the
Creed, Article III., note on Eutychian heresy. The term substantial is
used by Bishop Poynet in his Diallacticon, and by Bishop Taylor (Real
Presence, &c., Oxford Ed. 1836, p. 521) to express the True Presence. The
Confession of Augsburg is said, both by the Apologia (art. iv. de Ecclesia)
and by the papal confutation of it (num. x.) to have taught the real and
‘ substantial’ presence, which is also affirmed in the Lutheran Formula
Concordise, pars i., art. vii.” — Sir W. Palmer on the Church, v. i., p. ii.,
ch. vii., p. 524.

“ This Catholic and Apostolic Church has always avoided any attempt
to determine too minutely the mode of the true Presence in the Holy
Eucharist. Guided by Scripture, she establishes only those truths which
Scripture reveals, and leaves the subject in that mystery with which God
for His wise purposes has invested it. Her doctrine concerning the True
Presence appears to be limited to the following points : — Taking as her
immoveable foundation the words of Jesus Christ, ‘ This is my Body . . .
This is my Blood of the new covenant ;’ and, ‘ Whoso eateth my Flesh and
drinketh my Blood hath eternal life ;’ she believes that the Body or Flesh,
and the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Creator and Redeemer of the world,
both God and Man, united indivisibly in One Person, are verily and
indeed given to, taken, eaten, and received by the faithful in the Lord’s
Supper, under the outward sign or form of bread (and wine,) which is, on
this account, the ‘ partaking or communion of the Body and Blood of

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Christ.’ She believes that the Eucharist is not the sign of an absent*
body, and that those who partake of it receive not merely the figure or
shadow or sign of Christ’s Body, but the reality itself. And as Christ’s
Divine and Human Natures are inseparably united, so she believes that
we receive in the Eucharist not only the Flesh and Blood of Christ, hut
Christ Himself both God and Man. Resting on these words, ‘ The bread
which we break is it not the communion of the Body of Christ P’ and
again, ‘ I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine,’ she holds
that the nature of the bread and wine continues after consecration, and
therefore rejects transubstantiation or ‘ the change of the substance’ which
supposes the nature of bread entirely to cease by consecration.” — Sir W.
Palmer on the Church, v. i., p. ii., ch. vii., pp. 526-528.

“Believing, according to the Scriptures, that Christ ascended in His
natural Body into heaven, and shall only come from thence at the end of
the world ; she rejects, for this reason, as well as the last, any such real
Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood as is ‘ corporal’ or organical, that is,
according to the known and earthly mode of existence of a body.” — Sir
W. Palmer on the Church, v. i., p. ii., ch. vii., p. 529.

“ In Bishop Andrews’s answer to Bellarmine, he says : Praesentiam
credimus non minus quam vos veram ; de modo prsesentise nil temere
definimus. And soon afterwards : Nobis vohiscum de objecto convenit,
de modo lis omnis est. De hoc est, fide firma tenemus quod sit, de hoc
modo est, ut sit Per, sive In, sive Cum, sive Sub, sive Trans, nullum inibi
verbum est. I quote from Casaubon’s Epistles, p. 393. This is reduced to
plain terms : We fully agree with you that Christ’s Body is actually
present in the Sacramental elements, in the same sense as you use the
word ; but we see no cause for determining the precise mode, whether by
transubstantiation or otherwise.” — “ Hallam’s Constitutional History,”
ch. viii. Charles I.

“Mr. Martineau has the merit, so rare among polemical writers, of
throwing himself into the attitude, and even spirit, of those from whom
he dissents. If, then, Mr. Martineau is not at the trouble of taking a side
in the discussions and divisions which prevail in the extant Christianity,
his testimony to the mere fact of what the wrangling disputants (whom
he looks down upon with such superior impartiality) hold has remarkable
value. On this account we extract a passage which is not without its
value : — ‘ The office of Communion in the English Church contains even
stronger marks of the same sacerdotal superstitions ; and, notwithstanding
the Protestant horror entertained of the Mass, approaches it so nearly
that no ingenuity can exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however,
like near neighbours, are known to quarrel most. The idea of a physical
sanctity residing in solid and liquid substances is encouraged by this
service. The sacredness by consecration imparted is represented as sur-
viving the celebration, and residing in the substances as a permanent
quality. . . What the particular change may be it is by no means easy

to determine, but it is certainly conceived that they cease to be any longer
mere bread and wine, and that with them henceforth co-exist, really and
substantially, the Body and Blood of Christ. Respecting this Real
Presence with the elements, there is no dispute between the Romish and

* Thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the Supper of the Lord there is
no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing abs .it. — Horn, xxvii.,

p. 1.

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English Church : both unequivocally maintain it ; and the only question
is respecting the real absence of the original and culinary bread and
wine ; the Roman Catholic believing that these substantially vanish, and
are replaced by the Body and Blood of Christ : the English Protestant
conceiving that they remain, but are united with the latter. . . the
Catechism of our Church affirming that 4 the Body and Blood of Christ
are verily and indeed taken,’ &c. And this was not intended to be
figuratively understood of the spiritual use and appropriation to which
the faith and piety of the receiver would mentally convert the elements :
for, although here the Body of Christ is only said to be “ taken” (making
it the act of the communicant), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as
‘ given’ (making it the act of the celebrating priest), and implying the
Real Presence before participation. However anxious, indeed, many of
the ‘ Evangelical’ school may be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted
that their Church has always maintained a supernatural change in the
elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver.’ We are not
saying that Mr. Martineau’s language is always technically accurate ; but
his witness to the broad general meaning and doctrine of the English
Church, written long before the Denison or Aberdeen controversy, is as
important as full.” — “ Christian Remembrancer,” Jan., 1859, p. 246.

“ The Christian then (i. e., in the Early Church) believed — and we
believe it now — that at such Eucharistic Communion a special virtue and
grace were imparted to the faithful communicant. He believed in the
presence of Christ in His Temple, upon His Altar, in the elements of
bread and wine.” — “ Boyle Lectures,” by Rev. C. Merivale, p. 160.

“ Showing forth the Death according to the Flesh of the only-begotten
Son of God, i.e., Jesus Christ, and confessing His Resurrection from
the dead, and Ascension into the Heavens, we celebrate in the Churches
the holy and life-giving, and unbloody Sacrifice, not believing that that
Body which lies to open view is the body of one of the men among us,
and of a common man ; and in like manner also the precious Blood, but
rather receiving it as having become the proper Body and also Blood of
the all-vivifying Word.” — S. Cyril Expl. xi. T. vi. p. 156.

“We celebrate in the Churches the unbloody Sacrifice, and so we
approach to the mystic eulogies and are sanctified, being here made
partakers of the holy Flesh and of the precious Blood of Christ the
Saviour of all. And we receive it not as common flesh, God forbid ! nor
indeed as that of a sanctified man, and one associated with the Divinity
by unity of dignity, nor as one that hath the Divinity dwelling within
Him, but as the truly life-giving and proper flesh of the Word Himself.
’AAA.’ &>s faoTrolhv a\r) 0<£y, Kal iS'iav avrov rov \6yov.” — S. Cyril Ep. Syn. Alex.
T. v. p. ii. Epp. p. 72.

“We deny not a true and real Presence and Perception of Christ’s

Body and Blood in the Sacrament I believe that in the

Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper there are both objects present to, and
received by a worthy receiver ; and in it the bread and wine, in their own
nature and substances, distinct do remain, as well as their accidents. . . .
Also there are spiritual, invisible, and credible, yet most true and real
present objects of Faith. The Body and Blood of Christ, — that is Christ
Jesus Himself. . . . These two materials of the Sacrament are so

united, that it may be truly said (not in a gross and physical, but Divine

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and Sacramental sense) the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of
Christ, and Christ’s Body and Blood are bread and wine — John vi. —
meat indeed and drink indeed, not by transmutation of nature, but by a
similitude of virtues, and proportionable effects, by a sacramental union
and relation depending upon the truth, authority, and divine power of the
Institutor, Jesus Christ, whose appointment of these elements to such a
use or end, and uniting them in this near relation to His Body and Blood
by the solemn consecration of them, make up the form and true being of
a Sacrament, which requires a truth and reality both of the signs and
symbols, and That which is by them represented and signified ; a truth
and certainty of relation and connexion one with another, so that I receive
not only Panem Domini, the Bread of the Lord, but also Panem
Dominum, my Lord Jesus (to wit, the true Bread of Life eternal to my
Soul and Body) — this latter as truly and really as the former, together
with all the benefits which flow from Christ.” — Dr. Gauden’s “ Whole
Duty of a Communicant,” 10th edit., 1862. — N.B. The italics are Dr.
Gauden’s.

“ In the Sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper, the Body
and Blood of Christ, and therefore the whole of Christ, is verily and
indeed present, and is verily partaken by us, and verily combined with the
sacramental signs, as being not only significative but exhibitory, so that
in the bread duly given and received, the Body of Christ is given and
received, in the wine given and received, the Blood of Christ is given and
received, and thus there is a communication of the whole Christ in the
communion of the Sacrament. But not in a corporal, gross, earthly
manner by transubstantiation or consubstantiation, or the like inventions
of human reason, but in a mystical, heavenly, and spiritual manner, as is
rightly taught in our articles.” — Knox, Remains, ii. pp. 181, 182, quoting
Overall.

To my brother, M. Sa. Hall (who was going to be ordained).

“Ho occasion from any altered estate of the soule may find him unfur-
nished [to wit, the priest] : he must ascend to God’s altar with much awe,
with sincere and cheerfull devotion ; so taking, celebrating , distributing
his Saviour as thinking himselfe at table in Heaven with the blessed
angels. In the meane time as he wants not a thankful! regard to the
Master of the feast, so not care of the guests,” &c. — Bishop Joseph Hall,
Epistles, Decad iv., Epistle 5. Works vol. vi., p. 221, Oxford, 1837.

COMMEMORATIVE SACRIFICE.

1. “ Tracts for the Times.” 81.

2. “ The Theological Defence for the Bishop of Brechin.” Masters, 1860.

“ The article condemning ‘ the sacrifices of masses, in which it was
commonly said that Christ was offered for the quick and dead, for
remission of pain or guilt,’ rightly censures that erroneous view of the
sacrifice, but does not declare against the Doctrine of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice rightly understood.” — The Rev. Sir W. Palmer, Bt., on the
Church, T. i. 1 pp. 524, 525.

“ And in this wondrous manner it comes to pass that Christ, ever giving
Himself back to us anew in this Sacrament as often as the Consecration is

repeated, can always be offered anew to God, and thus represent and
confirm tlie perpetual efficacy of His first oblation on the Cross. Not
that by this propitiatory Sacrifice, repeated for the remission of sins, any
new efficacy is superadded to the efficacy of tbe passion ; its virtue con-
sists in the representation and application of that first bloody Sacrifice,
which “ perfected all things once and its fruit is the Divine grace which
accrues to those who assist at this tremendous Sacrifice, and who worthily
celebrate the oblation in unison with the priest, — Leibnitz “ System of
Theology,” p. 130.

“ Thus Cranmer evidently believed the corporal presence during the
whole reign of Henry VIII., and we have seen that even in Edward the
Sixth’s time he admitted an oblation or sacrifice in the Eucharist, and
therefore he did not act against his own conscience in saying mass ; more
especially since he afterwards did not reject , but explained the language
of the fathers in speaking of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, by supposing
rightly that they called it so, chiefly as being a commemoration of the
one great sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross. This most
acceptable spiritual sacrifice he did not deny : and therefore he might,
without violating his conscience, both perform the Liturgy and give to
the priests whom he ordained the power of offering sacrifice.” — Sir W.
Palmer on the Church, v. i. p. 543.

“ The Church of England has always acknowledged such a sacrifice.
The thirty-first article is directed against the vulgar and heretical doctrine
of the reiteration of Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharist. It was only those
‘ missarum sacrificia quihus vulgo dicehatur, sacerdotem offerre Christum
in remissionem pcense aut culpae pro vivis et defunctis,’ which are pro-
nounced ‘ blasphema figmenta et perniciosae imposturse ;’ but not
‘ missarum sacrificia,’ as understood by the fathers and in an orthodox
sense. The article was directed against the errors maintained or coun-
tenanced by such men as Soto, Hardinge, &c., who by rejecting the
doctrine of a sacrifice by wag of commemoration and consecration , and
not literally identical with that on the Cross, and by their crude and
objectionable mode of expression, countenanced the vulgar error that the
sacrifice of the Eucharist or Mass, was in every respect equal to that of
Christ on the Cross ; and that it was in fact either a reiteration or a con-
tinuation of that sacrifice. The article was not directed against the
doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as explained by Bossuet, Veron, and
others, with which we have no material fault to find. Cranmer himself
acknowledged that it might be called a sacrifice ; and our theologians,
such as Bramhall, Beveridge, Patrick, Wilson, bishops ; and Mason,
Field, Mede, Johnson, &c., always have taught the doctrine of the
Eucharistic altar, sacrifice, and oblation, according to Scripture and
Apostolical tradition ; and the Articles of the Church of England recog-
nise the clergy in their various orders as sacerdotes, Upe7s Ministers of
Sacrifice.” — Sir W. Palmer on the Church, v. 11, p. 463.

“ It hath come before the holy and great Synod, that, in certain places
and cities, the Deacons give the Eucharist to the Presbyters, which neither
the canon nor usage has handed down, that those who have no power to
offer should give to those ivho offer, the Body of Christ. It also came to
our knowledge that some of the deacons take the Eucharist even before
the Bishops. Let all this be done away.” — Council of Nice, can. 18.

“ The Hebrews in the sacrifices from their flocks, which they offered to
God in many and various ways (as was worthy of so great thing),

159

solemnized the prediction of that future Sacrifice, which Christ hath
offered. Whence Christians now solemnize the memoy'y of that completed
Sacrifice in the sacred Oblation and Communion of the Body and Blood
of Christ.” — S. Augustine Cont. Faust, lxx., c. 18.

“ I add to what hath been already observed, the consent of all the
Christian Churches in the world, however distant from each other, in the
Prayer of Oblation of the Christian Sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist, or
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ; which consent is indeed wonderful. All
the ancient liturgies agree in this Form of Prayer, almost in the same
words, but fully and exactly in the same sense, order, and method ; which
whosoever attentively considers, must be convinced that this order of
prayer was delivered to the several Churches in the very first plantation
and settlement of them.” — Bp. Bull, S. xiii.

“ The Apostle clearly declareth that the same one individual sacrifice
which Christ carried into the Holy of Holies, through the Veil, to
present It to God, is that which all Christians participate of, in the

Eucharist always If the prayers of the Church be accepted

of God in consideration of the Sacrifice of the Cross appearing always
before the Throne of God within the Veil to intercede for us, is it not all
reason that the Church when it celebrateth the remembrance thereof upon
earth should offer and present it to God?” — Thorndike, vol. 1 part 2,
p. 477.

“ But the sacrifice that is most proper and peculiar to the Gospel, is
the Sacrament of our Lord's Supper , instituted by our Lord Himself, to
succeed all the bloody sacrifices in the Mosaick law. For though we
cannot say, as some absurdly do, that this is such a sacrifice, whereby
Christ is again offered up to God, both for the living and the dead ; yet it
may as properly be called a sacrifice as any that was ever offered, except
that which was offered by Christ Himself ; for His, indeed, was the only
true expiatory sacrifice that was ever offered. Those under the law were
only types of His, and were called sacrifices only upon that account,
because they typified and represented that which He was to offer for the
sins of the world. And, therefore, the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and
Blood may as well be called by that name as they were. They were
typical, and this is a commemorative sacrifice. They foreshewed the
death of Christ to come ; this shews forth His death already past. 4 For
as often, saith the Apostle, as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do
show the Lord’s death till He come.’ This is properly our Christian
sacrifice, which neither Jews nor Gentiles can have any share in, as the
Apostle observes, ‘We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat
which serve the tabernacle.’ An altar where we partake of the great
sacrifice, which the Eternal Son of God offered up for the sins of the
whole world, and ours among the rest.” — Bishop Beveridge. Sermon
viii. “ Christianity an Holy Priesthood.”

“ Though Christ is not now seen to offer, yet Himself is offered on
earth, when the body of Christ is offered ; yea, Himself is plainly seen to
offer in us, Whose Word sanctifieth the sacrifice which is offered.” — St.
Ambrose in Psalm 38 § 1, 25.

Page 88, a.

'‘We find that when the English Church is in controversy with the
Church of Rome her best champions defend her, not by maximising the

160

difference between tbe Churches, but by shewing that the English Church
possessed all the privileges and blessings which the Church of Rome
possessed — a true Sacrifice and a Real Presence. The Roman argument
was, Protestantism has neither Sacrifice nor Presence. The answer was,
if by Protestantism you mean the Anglican Church, that Anglican
Church possesses every thing which you have. One cardinal fact alone
distinguishes between us— the belief of Transubstantion. It, and it only,
according to these Divines, is the differentia between the two Churches.
How clearly do Andrewes, Bramhall, and even Cosin at one time in his
life, maintain that if the doctrine of Transubstantiation be “ abated,”
there will remain no difference with the opponents on the subject of the
Presence or the Sacrifice! It is clear, then, that these writers claim for
the Church of England the possession of the same Presence, and of the
same doctrine concerning the Presence, as the Church of Rome, minus
Transubstantiation and all its consequences. The foundation in both
cases is the same; the superstructure must be abated, and then agreement
will take place. — “ Theological defence for the Bishop of Brechin,” p. 91.

Page 88, b.

“ And as for the number of them, if they should be considered according
to the exact signification of a sacrament, namely, for the visible signs,
expressly commanded in the New Testament, whereunto is annexed the
promise of free forgiveness of. our sins, and of our holiness and joining
in Christ, there be but two; namely, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.
For although absolution hath the promise of forgiveness of sin, yet by the
express word of the New Testament it hath not this promise annexed and
tied to the visible sign, which is imposition of hands. For this visible
sign (I mean laying on of hands) is not expressly commanded in the New
Testament to be used in absolution, as the visible signs in Baptism and
the Lord’s Supper are: and therefore absolution is no such sacrament as
Baptism and the Communion are. And though the ordering of ministers
hath this visible sign and promise, yet it lacks the promise of remission of
sin, as all other sacraments besides the two above named do. Therefore,
neither it, nor any other sacrament else, be such sacraments as Baptism
and the Communion are. But in a general acception the name of a sacra-
ment may be attributed to anything, whereby an holy thing is signified.”
— Homily of Common Prayer and Sacraments.

Page 90, a.

A person, who was in his day a leading member of the Evangelical
party, in speaking to me of a most painful and dangerous operation he
had gone through, referred his power of patient endurance, and so the
success of the operation, to his very close communion with our Lord
during this great trial ; and he added that he owed much of that com-
munion with his Saviour to the fact that, in God’s gracious Providence,
he was placed (in the surgeon’s room) in the presence of a beautiful print
of Our Lord’s Crucifixion. I noted at the time this testimony to the truth
I have asserted in my Charge.

Page 102, a.

It is well at the present time to call to mind what was Baxter’s estimate
of Eirenicons : —

“ How rare is it to meet with a man that smarteth or bleedeth with the
church’s wounds, or sensibly taketh them to heart as his own, or that ever

161

had solicitous thoughts of a cure ! No ; hut almost every party thinks
that the happiness of the rest consisteth in turning to them ; and because
they be not of their mind, they cry ‘ Down with them !’ and are glad to
hear of their fall, as thinking that is the way to the church’s rising ; that
is, their own. How few are there who understand the true state of con-
troversies between the several parties ? or that ever well discerned, how
many of them are hut verbal, and how many are real ? And if those that
understand it, disclose it to others, it is taken as an extenuation of their
error, and as a carnal compliance with them in their sin. Few men grow
zealous for peace till they grow old, or have much experience of men’s
spirits and principles, and see better the true state of the church, and the
several differences, than they did before. And then they begin to write
their Eirenicons. But recipiuntur ad modum recipientis.” — Baxter’s
“ Reformed Pastor,” Brown’s Ed., 1829, p. 164.

Page 106, a.

Dr. Daniel Wilson (Bishop of Calcutta), in 1829, when Vicar of
Islington, thus describes the neglect of the clergy even in his day : —

“ What have we been doing as ministers ? Lamentably as we have
failed in a general estimate of the vast importance of our office, and in a
view of its especial design, we have failed as lamentably in all those parts
of it which regard personal inspection, and vigilance over our flocks. We
have confined ourselves to preaching, to ecclesiastical duties, to occasional
visits to the sick, to the administration of the sacraments, to the external
and secular relation in which we stand to our parishes ; but what have we
done in personal care and direction, in affectionate catechetical conferences,
in going from house to house, in visiting every family and individual in
our districts, in becoming acquainted with the character, the wants, the
state of heart, the habits, the attendance on public worship, the observa-
tion of the Sabbath, the instruction of children and servants, the family
devotions of each house. And yet, all this ought to have been done, and
must be done, if a general revival of religion is to be expected. Nothing
short of this can come up to the ends of our calling, or fulfil the commands
of God, or accomplish the will of the Holy Ghost, or satisfy that system
of means which the Saviour has established in His Church.” — Introduc-
tory Essay to “ Baxter’s Reformed Pastor,” pp. 41, 42.

Page 107, a.

“ The maxim of later times, ‘ Cujus est regio, illius est religio,’ is blas-
phemous in theory and false in fact. When Christianity had triumphed,
and become, not only one of the collegia licita, but the actual religion of
the nation, it was still, by the veiy charter of its being, a body distinct
from the State ; touching it, however, and being touched by it, in so many
ways, that the teachers of its doctrines soon became endowed with goods
and lands, either by individuals under the sanction of the civil power, or
by the State itself. The Church became, to borrow a term familiar in
modern times, established in every Christian kingdom. It thus became a
collegium licitum, under the protection of the State as to its establish-
ment, but having a Divine mission, a divinely constituted order, a divinely
given doctrine, it remained, as it must ever remain, in all these respects,
independent of human authority.” — “ Commentaries on International
Law,” by Sir R. Phillimore, v. ii., pp. 284, 285.

162

Page 110, a.

“ Bossuet, assuming that the Articles of the Church of England were
conceived in vague and general terms, in order to admit different doctrines,
remarks that such a proceeding amounted to a betraying of the Truth.
Variat. x. s. vi : hut he himself says elsewhere, in defence of the Synod of
Trent, to which similar vagueness of expression is attributed “ qu’il faut
souvent dans les decisions de l’Eglise, s’en tenir a des expressions
generates, pour demeurer dans cette mesure de sagesse tant louee par S.
Paul, et n’etre pas contre son precepte plus savant qu’il ne faut.’ Yariat. xv.
s. 58. This is really the rule followed by our Catholic Apostolic Churches,
and not any political and latitudinarian principle of comprehending
different doctrines concerning matters of faith.” — Sir W. Palmer on the
Church, T. i. p. ii., ch. vii., p. 521.

Page 111, a.

“ ‘ Does not all the world see that the Church of England stands now
otherwise in order to the Church of Rome, than it did in Henry the
Seventh’s days ?’ He addeth further ‘ that it is confessed that the Papal
power in ecclesiastical affairs was cast out of England in Henry the
Eighth’s days.’ I answer that there was no mutation concerning Faith
nor concerning any legacy which Christ left to His Church, nor concerning
the power of the keys, or any jurisdiction purely spiritual ; hut concerning
co-active power in the exterior court, concerning political or external
regiment of the Church, concerning the patronage or civil sovereignty
over the Church of England, and the legislative, judiciary, and dispensative
power of the Pope in England, over English subjects, which was no more
than a re-infranchisement of ourselves, from the upstart usurpations of
the Court of Rome, of all which I have showed him expressly the first
source, who began them, when, and whom ; before which he is not able to
give one instance of any such practices attempted by the Bishop of Rome,
and admitted by the Church of England,”— Bramhall’s “ Schism Guarded.”
Works, v. ii. pp. 463, 464.

Page 111, b.

Baxter, in his “ Reformed Pastor,” did not teach that voluntary celibacy
was an admission of the claims of Rome. He says : —

“ I confess I would not have men lie too long under temptations to
incontinency, lest they wound themselves and their professions by their
falls. But yet methinks it is hard that men can do no more to mortify
the concupiscence of the flesh, that they may live in a single condition,
and have none of those temptations from wife and children, to hinder
them from furthering their ministerial ends by charitable works. If he
that marrieth not, doth better than he that doth, surely ministers should
labour to do that which is best. And if he that can ‘ receive this sajdng/
must receive it, we should endeavour after it. This is one of the highest
points of the Romish policy, which alleges that it is the duty of bishops,
priests, and other religious orders, not to marry, by which means they
have no posterity to drain the church’s revenues, nor to take up their
care ; but they make the public cause to be their interest, and they lay
out themselves for it while they live, and leave all they have to it when
they die. It is a pity that for a better cause we can no more imitate them
in self-denial, where it might be done.” — Brown’s Ed. 1829. p. 158.

163

Page 118, a.

The following words are taken from the introduction to Baxter’s
“ Reformed Pastor,” by the Rev. Daniel Wilson, d.d. (Bishop of Cal-
cutta), A.D. 1829, pp. 36, 38.

“ But a right conception of the unparalleled importance of the office of
the Christian Minister, as appointed by Christ himself, as the instrument
of grace, as the ambassador of reconciliation, as representing, and standing
in the place of the Saviour, as the depositary and pillar of the Truth, as
the messenger of the Lord of Hosts, the steward of the mysteries of
God, the watchman, and herald, and leader of the army, and the shepherd
of the flock of Christ — such a conception of the ministerial office is
essential to any great revival of religion. There is no surer mark of
spiritual decay, than a low esteem of the sacred function.”

“ The minister is a living organ, and instrument, and herald of truth.”

Page 118, b.

“ Such is the language, rash surely and presumptuous in the extreme,
of that most solemn and important of all the occasional Offices of the
Anglican Ritual — namely, the Form of ‘ Ordering of Priests and such
the stupendous powers, which one frail man assumes the right to confer
upon another, when called upon to invest him with the unpretending
though responsible duties of the Pastoral Office.

“ If, upon on an occasion so solemn, men have Apostolical gifts and
authority ostensibly committed to them ; it is no wonder, surely, that
they should assume to themselves Apostolical dignity, and the right to
exercise Apostolical power : and that, too, with all the exaggeration of
circumstance and manner, which weak and fallible men are sure to adopt,
in the exercise of a commission so exalted. It is no wonder, indeed, that
upon the strength of such a commission, a lineal Apostolical descent
should — considering the natural tendency of human nature to materialism ,
even while effecting a transcendental spirituality — be made the substitute
for that purer and more legitimate succession, which consists in identity
of principle and doctrine with the teaching of the Apostolic writings, and
in a real conformity of spirit with the purity and simplicity of Apostolic
times.

“ The power to ‘ remit’ and ‘ retain’ sins, conferred upon the clergyman
at his ordination, is authenticated, beyond a doubt, by the very terms of
the form prescribed for his direction, when afterwards called upon to
exercise it. ‘I absolve thee from all thy sins,' is most appropriate language
in the mouth of one to whom it has been said, as upon Divine warrant —
‘ Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven.' Nay, how could such
an one fail to use it, and yet be faithful to his solemn trust ! And these,
accordingly, are the very words which the officiating minister is directed
to use in the Office for the * Visitation of the Sick.’ — “ Revision of the
Book of Common Prayer,” by J. C. Fisher, M.A., pp. 52, 53, 54.

But you say : “ S. Chrysostom saith, ‘ Our priests have power utterly
to cleanse the filth of the soul.’ ” And who saith otherwise ? When we
consecrate priests, we pronounce Christ’s words over them : “ Whose sins
you do forgive, they are forgiven.” But are sins forgiven only by private
confession? — Bishop Jewel. Defence of the Apology, Parker Society
Edition, p. 352.

164

In a work on “ Ritualism” by Mr. E. Mellor, m.a., of Liverpool, occurs
the following passage: — “It is a greater wonder still that an eminent
Canon of the Church, in a recent lecture on the Priesthood, should, in
order to escape the pressure of the words in the Ordination Service, have
betook himself to a subterfuge unworthy of him, both as a scholar and a
minister of Christ. He, though a priest in the Church of England, in
maintaining the same position as that dealt with in our first lecture, that
there are no sacerdotal offices in the Church of Christ, was confronted
with the words of the Bishop in the Ordination of Priests, e Receive thou

the Holy Ghost,’ &c ‘Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted

unto them.’ And how does he deal with them ? He says, ‘ If you accept
them in a form of prayer, and under limitation, then those words may be
applied to your office.’ Is this candid ? Did not the worthy Canon see
that they are not in the form of a prayer ; that the prayer was finished ;
and that the Bishop, having completed the petition, then draws near to
the candidate and lays his hands upon his head, employing the most
direct, imperative language, which he follows up with words which are
neither imperative nor precatory, but declarative, and that in the plainest
manner, of the power the priest has received? Did he not see that the
Latin form of the language was as conclusive against his interpretation as
the English, and that there is not one expression which, without even the
most violent and licentious exegesis, can be regarded as having the form
or force of a prayer? ‘ If you accept them in the form of a prayer,’ this
is his supposition. But if we may play what tricks we choose with words,
we may make any words mean anything. The Canon is severe enough on
the Tractarians when they take liberties with the language of the Prayer
Book, but we know of no instance in which the maxim has more striking
application than in the present: ‘ First cast out the beam which is in thine
own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote which is in
thy brother’s eye.’ ”

THE RELATION OF DISSENTERS TO THEIR MINISTERS.
Page 121, a.

“ As to the Confessional, it seems to be forgotten or overlooked that the
principle on which the Confessional is based is acknowledged by all
Christians, viz., the craving for sympathy and instruction and peace,
which animates every real penitent. In legal difficulties we seek advice
from our lawyers, and in sickness from our doctors, and in religion we
seek for guidance from our spiritual pastors. The Confessional in principle
is founded on the deep, earnest, and impressible feelings of human nature.
The Dissenters, who profess to repudiate the Confessional in our Church,
virtually acknowledge it, and use it themselves. Nay, it is the very door
through which the various sects admit persons to membership. I refer to
the “ class meetings” among the Wesleyans, and the “ inquirer’s meetings,”
“ experience meetings,” and “ church meetings” among the Baptists and
Independents. On these occasions direct questions are put to the penitent
as to his experience, the state of his heart, his views of salvation, &c.,
and the minister administers comfort, rebuke, direction, as he thinks the
case requires. From the nature of the case, the. more private these inter-
views are the better. I was once a Dissenting minister, and people of both
sexes came to me very frequently to unburden their minds, and to be
prayed with. They came singly, sometimes, to my house ; sometimes they
met me in my chapel ; but the interviews were always as private as possible.

165

Now, here, I submit, are all the essentials of the Confessional, in a form,
too, very liable to abuse ; and some bad men have abused it. Yet what I
have stated is the universal practice among all the Evangelical sects in
England and Wales.”

Page 49, a.

The following Table has been drawn up to show the Septuagintal use of
the verb tt oieiv.

Septuagint.

Vulgate.

Autli. Version.

Exod. x. 25

o\ok. Kal Ovcrias , & Troihaop-ev

offeramus

sacrifice

Exod. xxix. 36

rb fioff-^dpiov Troihcreis

„

offer

Exod. xxix. 88

& Troihaeis, &fxvovs

facies

offer

Exod. xxix. 39

rbv &/J.VOV iroihaeis

offer

99 99

offer

Exod. xxix. 41

99 99

offeres

offer

Levit. iv. 20

Troir)<ret rbv p.6axov

faciens

do with

j» )»

did with

TTonjOhaeTat

do with

Levit. ix. 7

iroLTiaov rb Trepl rrjs a/xap.

immola

offer

TroiTjcrov ra dwpa

mactaveris

Levit. ix. 16

€iroi77<rei' avrb

fecit

„

Levit. ix. 22

TTOLTiaas rb irepl rrjs afxap.

completis

Levit. xiv. 19

Troihaei 6 tepevs

faciet

Levit. xiv. 30

7 roir)crei p.lav airb r. rpvybv.

offeret

Levit. xv. 15

TToiijan avTa

faciet

„

Levit. xv. 30

TroiTjaei 6 lepevs rfyv fxlav

Levit. xvi. 15

■rroih<rei rb al/xa

inferet

do with

99 99

Levit. xvi. 24

Troiriaei rb oXoKavrw/xa

obtulerit

offer

Levit. xvii. 4

iroirj(rai avT b els bXoKavrcc/xa*

offer

Levit. xvii. 9

Troirjcrai avrb

9 9

166

Septuagint.

Vulgate.

Auth. Version.

Levit. xxii. 23

acpayia rrorfpreis

offerre

offer

Levit. xxii. 24

ov TTOi^crere

make offering

Levit. xxiii. 12

7 Toi7j(rer€ ir pbfiarov

csedetur

offer

Levit. xxiii. 19

TroiT](rov(ri xw&pov

facietis

sacrifice

Num. vi. 11

7 ronjaet p'tav.

„

offer

Num. vi. 16

Troiri(ret rb n epl apaprlas

Num. vi. 17

rbv Kpibv 7rot7j<re<

immolabit

7 roL'fja’ei Qvcriav

offerens

Num. viii. 12

iroiricreis rbv cva

facies

„

Num. xv. 3

Trorf]<reis bAoxavr wpara

make offering

Num. xv. 8

TroiriTe airb ruv flow v

prepare

Num. xv. 24

noi^cra . . n6<rxov

offeret

offer

Num. xxviii. 4

rbv OyU vbv . . TTOl‘f)(r€lS

offeretis

offer

Num. xxviii. 8

>»

»> >>

1T0L'f](T€T€

Num. xxviii. 15

X'iy-apov . . iron]6'{j<TeTai

offeretur

Num. xxviii. 24

TToi^crcre

facietis

Num. xxviii. 31

r)]v Ovar'iav Troi'ffacre

offeretis

Num. xxix. 2

noi'Tiaere bAoxavribpara

Deut. xii. 27

TToiTjcreLs ra bAoxavrupara

„

Joshua xxii. 23

Troirjacu Ovcr'iav

imponeremus

Judges xiii. 16

iav iroi-pcrris bAoxavrwpa

facere

Judges xiii. 19

Siex^ptcre Troirjcrai

did

1 Kings iii. 15

eTroiricrev elprivixas

obtulit

offered

1 Kings viii. 64

iTTo'njcrcv bAoxavruxuv

fecit

1 Kings xi. 33

hrolr\<re rfj ' karrapvri*

adoraverit

worshipped

K)7

Septuagint.

V ulgate.

Autli. Version.

2 Kings v. 17

ov -iroiricrei . . dAonav ru/xa

faciet

offer

2 Kings x. 24

TroiTjaai to Ov/xara

facerent

offer

2 Kings x. 25

■KOLWV T7]V d\OKaVTWITU/

completum

2 Kings xvii. 32

sTroir)(rav

ponebant

sacrificed

2 Chron. vii. 7

iirolricrev ra oAoKayrdh/xaTa

obtulerat

offered

Job xlii. 8

'iroi'fio’ei KapirwaLV*

offerte

offer

Psalm lxvi. 15

7 roiT]<TU} croi /36as

offeram

offer

Isaiah xix. 21

Troiriaovai dvcias*

(colent)

do.

Jer. xxxiii. 18

iroiwv Qvolav

offerat

do.

Ezek. xliii. 25

TroirjfTcis ipityov

facies

prepare

d/xw/xa iroi^aovcri

offerent

Ezek. xliii. 27

troi’ficrovai

facient

make offering

Ezek. xlv. 17

7 Toir/ffei ra vtt ep a/xapTias

faciet

prepare

Ezek. xlv. 22

iroL'qffei . . . /xiff^ov

Ezek. xlv. 23

Troirfcrei oAoKavru/xara

Ezek. xlvi. 2

7 Toiricrovaiv ol lepe?s

„

Ezek. xlvi. 12

noiri(rr) . . . bAoicav Tup.a

”

Ezek. xlvi. 13

7T 017)<T€L . . . afxi >6v

iroi'fjfl’Gi ain 6v

Ezek. xlvi. 15

TrotVjo'eTe a/x v6v

”

The above (with the exception of those marked *) represent the Hebrew

word ntoV.

T T

The others as follow : — Lev. xvii. 4=Hiph. of H*^p. — Is. xix. 21=

1 Kings xi. 33=Hithpalel of Tint!). — Job xlii. 8=Hiph. of

With these passages compare S. Luke ii. 27 — tov Troirjo-ai avrots. “ To do
for him,” &c.

Also in the present office of the Greek Church in the Prothesis when
all is ready for the Liturgy the Deacon says to the Priest — naipbs tov
irotriffai rep Kvp'iy. — Euchologion Mega, p. 44.

168

The following are instances of use of -n-ote 7v with unbloody sacrifices : —

Septuagint.

Vulgate.

Auth. Version.

Exod. xxix. 41

i TOL^creis Kapirufia

Levit. ii. 7

<re/xida\is iroiyOriffeTai

fuerit sacrificium

made

Levit. ii. 8

„

offerens

Levit. ii. 11

ov 7roi7j<reTe £ vpaariv .

fiet

Levit. vi. 22

•iro'iria'ei axni]v

offeret

offer

Num. xv. 5

olvov . . . TroiTjcrere

dabit

prepare

Num. xv. 6

iroiTjcreLS Ovalav (Te/iiSaXecos

erit sacrificium

prepare

Num. xv. 14

Troi^crei Kapiton ixa

offerent

offer

Num. xxviii. 21

(cre/x'iSaXis) . . . iroi'f)(T€is

Num. xxviii. 24

iroififfeis T. (TTTOV^V

(facietis)

Ezek. xlvi. 14

itOLrjcrei p.avaa 7l772l?D

faciet

prepare

All the above represent the Hebrew verb 7712^

In Numbers xv. 6, the word itoiziv is used twice in the Septuagint where
there is no Hebrew to correspond, as also in Numbers xxviii. 5, and
2 Kings x. 21. Compare Baruch i. 10.

The following are some of the many passages where the word iroieTu is
used of keeping the Passover: —

Exodus xii. 48 ; xiii. 5.

Numbers ix. 2, 8, 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Deuteronomy xvi. 1.

Joshua v. 10.

2 Chron. xxx. 21, 23 ; xxxv. 1, 16, 17, 18, 19.

Ezra vi. 19, 22.

1 Esdras i. 6.

S. Matthew xxvi. 18.

Hebrews xi. 28.

Bennett, Printer, Journal Office, Salisbury.

CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

OF THE

DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

OF THE

g tores e of JfrtErmrfott

DELIVERED AT HIS EIGHTH TRIENNIAL VISITATION
IN THE CHURCH OF
ST. PAUL'S, PORTLAND, ST. JOHN

June 30, 1868

JOHN, BISHOP OF FREDERICTON.

ITflnion

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1868

OXFORD:

BY T. COMBE, M.A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A.,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

To the Clergy of the Diocese.

I may be allowed to thank you, dear Brethren,
for your unanimous wish that I should print my
Charge, and for your handsome offer to bear
the expense of it. I am fully aware that this
offer does not bind you to the adoption of every
opinion contained in it, but it shows the great
interest which you take in the subject ; and I
am pleased to add that this interest is shared
by the laity, many of whom requested me to
read a considerable part of it again to them at
a large meeting assembled for the promotion of
objects connected with the welfare of our
Church.

JF.

NOTICE.

The Bishop of Fredericton's Charge is printed in this
country at the request of many whose judgment is entitled
to respect.

I am desired by the Bishop to say, that though his
Lordship did not attend the Lambeth Conference, yet that
he fully concurs in the desirableness of summoning such an
assembly, as a measure not only justifiable, but wise and
provident; while at the same time he could have wished for
a more definite arrangement of subjects ripe for discussion.

J. WILKINSON.

Broughton Gifford, Oct. 1868.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

OF THE

DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

Reverend and dear Brethren,

We must be sadly indifferent to the calls of God’s
Providence, if the death of four of our small number of
clergy, within a very short time, does not impress us
to-day with a solemn sense of duty.

Two of those taken from us were men of marked
ability in various ways, and will be much missed in
their several spheres of influence; and one of those
removed from us, though of a less keen intellect, was a
rare instance of childlike simplicity and guilelessness
of character. May they all f find mercy of the Lord in
that day.’

As the younger clergy may not feel so acutely as the
elder that this heavenly call demands of them without
delay fto set their house in order,’ I would earnestly

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

and affectionately remind you that the decease of your
elder brethren, and the perilous crisis through which our
Church is now passing, call for increased earnestness,
increased unity, increased manifestation of the life and
fervour of religion in all your Church-work, whether it
be private, pastoral, or social.

The peculiar habits of a country so thinly peopled as
this is, and depending so much on hazardous specula-
tion, are very unfavourable to religious thought and
religious unity. f Scattered and peeled,’ to use a Scrip-
tural expression, the tendency of the settlers is to
separation and deadness of feeling. Often without
any literature, feeding solely on the husks of a passing
newspaper, or on the unwholesome stimulant of party
controversy which they can ill understand, what can
we expect but those spasmodic bursts of religious feel-
ing, which supply an electric life for a few weeks, and
then sicken, droop, and die away into deadness again ?
It must be confessed, I think, that, with the highest
perception of the sober and sustained majesty of many
parts of our Liturgy, and of its comprehensive and
attractive petitions, its very freedom from errors of taste
requires an educated mind in order thoroughly to enjoy
it ; and even the condensed force of the collects passes
over the heads of uneducated persons, and they do not

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

‘ say Amen at our giving of thanks ’ in the intelligent

spirit which the great Apostle recommends. There
must, therefore, be the greater need that you should
endeavour to call Church-knowledge and life into action •
that by schools, by private and public instructions, both
in the pulpit and out of it, you should teach your people
what is the value of our prayers and services, what they
mean, what is their order, how they may be made most
conducive to private devotion and family worship; and
how a life moulded and regulated by the spirit of our
prayers will be a life of piety, honesty, integrity, and
purity, of love to God, and love to man, such as no
Church on earth need be ashamed of.

The activity of men’s minds in the present age lead-
ing to inquiry on all subjects, and to different aspects of
thought in the most sincere and painstaking inquirers,
is not of itself an evil. It is a part of God’s Providence,
which it is our duty especially to discover, and to see
that it imposes on us new, grave, and arduous duties.
In former times, clergymen, whether ignorant or not,
whether holy men or the reverse, were respected for
their office. As the laity did not trouble themselves
greatly about the doctrines of religion, they listened to
the clergy with respect, even though they were not
possessed of much information, nor gifted with the

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

power of imparting knowledge. The general diffusion
of a certain amount of learning, and the special study
of sacred subjects by great numbers of the laity, have
entirely changed the aspect of things. Many of the
laity equal, or even exceed, the clergy in sacred know-
ledge; many more are masters of subjects connected
with Biblical knowledge. History, geography, astro-
nomy, geology, and other kindred sciences, have all
been cultivated with an amazing success, and the re-
sults have been directed to the field of Biblical literature.
The office, the duties, the pastoral work, the public
discourses of the clergy, have all been considered by
laymen from a layman’s point of view, and the freest
criticism has been applied to them ; and, last of all, the
same criticism has been applied to the Sacred Scriptures
themselves, both by reverent and irreverent minds. We
may lament over, or we may rejoice in, this altered re-
lation; but we cannot f force the course of a river.’
We may, however, certainly use it to subserve our own
good designs, and may turn it into many useful chan-
nels. What I wish to impress upon you all is, that we
are deeply responsible for the manner in which we meet
this overpowering tide. To meet it with unmanly
lamentations is worse than useless ; it is actually sinful,
if the new order of things be part of God’s providential

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

government. It is equally useless to meet it with
simple denunciation of infidelity. All men who doubt
are not infidels. When a subject is presented to us in
a new light, we naturally stand in doubt as to which of
the two or more aspects of the truth will prove to be
correct, and we withhold our assent till our convictions
are satisfied. Ignorance and self-conceit often dog-
matize, when the wiser and more reverent mind is
endeavouring to discover where the truth lies. It must,
therefore, be seen by all candid inquirers, that the
learning which sufficed for a clergyman fifty years since,
will not suffice for him now, if he desires to vindicate
the truth, and bring it home to the understandings, as
well as to the affections, of his hearers. High-sounding
words with no better foundation than our own repeated
assertions will show their emptiness in the long run,
and the most sincere and pious intentions will not
make amends for the want of that which all educated
laymen feel that their teacher ought to possess, let him
be as pious as he may. Happily, there is no great,
certainly no insuperable, difficulty which need prevent
a clergyman’s acquiring the necessary learning, as there
never was a period when a larger number of good and
valuable works was more accessible, many of them
cheap, as well as good. The Heading and assiduous

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

meditation,’ which St. Paul enjoins, the ‘ books and
parchments,’ which, on the verge of martyrdom, he
desired might be brought to him, show that the Apostle,
at all events, did not undervalue learning, and that he
was a diligent student to the last moment of his life.

But this universal spirit of inquiry is accompanied by
a restless unquietness of mind, which is, no doubt, pro-
ductive of much evil. There is, perhaps, no subject of
thought, political, social, civil, or religious, of which it
may not be said that the foundations are shaken • and
the complexity of the various subjects of controversy
renders the mind more uneasily alive to the difficulty of
our position. This is much increased, in our own case,
by the fact that the Church of England, be it for good
or evil, is, on some points, a compromise — an endea-
vour to find a mean between extremes. In our Articles
we find many strong expressions against Roman errors,
but we find others equally as strong against very oppo-
site doctrine. The nineteenth Article asserts that f the
Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, as also
the Church of Rome, have erred*’ but the 30th Canon
declares that fit was so far from the purpose of the
Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches
of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like
Churches, in all things that they held and practised,

OF THE DIOCESE' OF FREDERICTON.

that it only departed from them in those particular
points, wherein they are fallen from themselves in their
ancient integrity, and from the Apostolical Churches,
which were their first founders.5 How much bitterness
might have been spared, if such wise and moderate
expressions had ever been the guide of our divines !

In spite of all our declarations against Rome, no Angli-
can bishop attempts to re-ordain a Roman priest, but
invariably ordains a Presbyterian or Wesleyan minister ;
yet we do not anathematize either the one or the other.
The somewhat obscure wording of some of the Articles,
and the various changes and revisions of our Liturgy,
prove that it was always the desire of our Church to be
as comprehensive as possible, short of the sacrifice of
what is plainly revealed, and that the different deduc-

tions of men’s minds from the same text are not only
worthy of consideration, but are not always to meet
with disallowance on one side or the other, where the
matter is obscure, or is not illustrated by catholic con-
sent and universal Christian tradition. In a system
like that of the Church of England, standing midway
between Rome and Geneva, it must clearly be im-
possible to insist on absolute uniformity of thought, of
action, or of ritual. The whole history of our Church
is a history of the failure of the enforcement by law of

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

absolute uniformity. No sooner was the Reformation
launched, than the principal reformers fled from perse-
cution into foreign countries. There, so far from being
united, their differences were many, and became em-
bittered ; and they returned to England only to open
the whole question, or the series of questions, which
from that period have troubled and perplexed the Eng-
lish mind. The evils of disunion appeared to be so
great, that absolute uniformity was the only remedy
that presented itself to some of the governors of the
Church ; and Archbishop Laud hoped to accomplish this
object by a perfect union of Church and State, and by
employing the whole power of the State to crush non-
conformity. How egregiously he failed, and how both
Church and State were brought low in the well-intended,
but mistaken, endeavour, every one knows. This great
desolation past, and the royal family restored, again a
stringent law was passed to effect perfect uniformity.
But though partially successful, a large number of
ministers with their flocks left our pale, and bequeathed
to posterity rights to be asserted, wrongs to be avenged,
and attacks to be incessantly made on the Church
favoured and protected by the State. The Church of
England, however, remained, in temporals, victorious,
and then passed into a condition (at least so it seems

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

to be generally supposed) of comparative sloth and in-
difference. From this we were aroused by a loud cry
of energy and zeal, proceeding from those who were at
first sincerely attached to our Church, yet who certainly
broached new opinions, not easily reconcilable with our
Prayer Book; yet they protested to their last moments
that they lived and died in the Communion of the
Church of England. This movement, the force, ex-
tent, and duration of which could not be foreseen, was
ascribed to an insane enthusiasm. Those in power
could neither believe in it, nor appreciate it. Again the
sword of uniformity was unsheathed, and again a vast
breach was made in our ranks. Thousands left us, and
remain to thisday destitute of the attachment which
their founder had to our Church, and, I fear, with very
little wish to return to it.

From this time, it appears to me, from such sources
of inquiry as are open to me, that the principle of com-
pulsory uniformity has been practically given up, after
the failure of so many attempts to enforce it by the
power of the State; men^s minds have become ac-
customed to differ in matters not essential to the faith ;
and it must be admitted that a very general neglect of
the decency and reverence due to the worship of God
was the immediate result of a reaction from the attempt

1 6

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

to put down nonconformity with a high hand. That I
have not overstated the result is evident, I think, from
two practical proofs, which I shall now mention.

If we examine the royal Declaration prefixed to the
Thirty-nine Articles, King James says that c the bishops
and clergy, in convocation, shall have license, under
our broad seal, to deliberate of, and to do, all such
things, as being made plain to them, and assented to
by us, shall concern the settled continuance of the
Church of England now established, from which we
will not endure any varying or departing in the least
degree Again, c in those curious and unhappy differ-
ences that have for so many hundred years, in different
times and places, exercised the Church of Christ (here
the Declaration seems to include all controversies of
doctrine and discipline from the Arian controversy to
those connected with Calvin), vie viill that all curious
search be laid aside l How singularly the spirit of the
Tudor-descended sovereign seems to speak out here; and
how remarkable it is to hear him speak as if not only
England, and all Christendom, but the realm and ample
domain of the mind of man, lay prostrate at his feet,
and at the dread words, c Le roi s'avisera,5 all disputa-
tion would be for ever hushed, and that the waves and
storms of thought would lie still in everlasting peace.

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

1 7

Yet if a sovereign in our day should express such sen-
timents, who would pay any attention to them? The
whole theory of Tudor government has melted away.
We retain the Declaration ; and there it stands before
the Articles. No one ventures to touch it, but no one
believes it, though many of our great divines once
proclaimed it, and did their best to maintain it.

I was once present at a meeting of most of the Eng-
lish bishops when the question was discussed whether
an address should be presented to Her Majesty to re-
move from the Prayer Book three of the State services
then appended to it, and in use by many of the clergy.
A prelate, not now living, remarked that he feared the
removal of them would give umbrage to many sincere
Protestants. It was drily observed that, probably, the
Protestants would not discover that they had been re-
moved, so little regard was generally paid to those
services ; and the result has proved the general truth of
the opinion. The services were expunged without long
deliberation, and with less attention. Prayers and
applications of Scripture which appeared perfectly appro-
priate in former times made not the slightest impression
on the public mind in our own day ; and many seem to
be ignorant that these services were ever in their Prayer
Books, and certainly feel no regret at their removal.

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

Yet how vast is the difference implied between our
ancestors and ourselves in our tone of thought on these
matters !

To take another view of the same subject. If you
read the sermons of divines of other days, such as those
of Bishop Andrewes, Bishop Sanderson, or Dr. South,
valuable as they are in many respects, it would be
impossible to preach them when they touch on the
relations between Church and State, or on the conduct
of dissenters; not only because the relations are en-
tirely altered, but because the statements, if now made,
would be perfectly untrue. Our feelings and habits are
entirely different, though the letter of our formularies
continues to be the same. I draw, therefore, this
conclusion, that, constituted as the Church of England
is, and must remain, if she continue to be a mean
between two powerful and apparently irreconcilable
adversaries; unable as she is, by her constitution, to
accept the theory of a living, infallible authority on
earth, whose word shall be law to every Church, and
every member of every Church, it is perfectly chimerical
in her to aim at absolute or enforced uniformity either
of doctrine or of ritual. Even Roman Catholics have
never attained it. Though the decrees of the living
Pope are their law, it is clear that the Popes have not

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

been uniform in their decrees, either on doctrine or
ritual; and the vast orders, by means of which the
Roman Church has controlled various schools of
thought, differ still more widely. If our Church pro-
fess to be built on a more popular basis, it is plain
that we cannot evade the necessary conclusion, that
whether a man be called Low Churchman, High
Churchman, or Ritualist, there is comprehensiveness
enough in our Church to embrace him, and there
ought to be charity enough to make use of his zeal
and piety, though as to the means he makes use of
to promote the glory of God and the salvation of
souls, our conclusions may widely differ.

Another moral I should draw from the historical facts
to which I have called your attention is, that Providence
has been for three centuries plainly teaching us that
the strength of our Church does not lie in its connection
with the State; and that when that connection has
been closest, the State has been unable to enforce uni-
formity of teaching and ritual, and the Church has been
least prosperous. And if even in England, where the
bishops are officially recognized in Parliament, where
the majority of the nobility and landed gentry are
members of the Church, it is evident, from all the signs
of the time, that Establishments have seen their best

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

days ; and that the time will come when a higher and
nobler strength, than kings or parliaments can supply,
will be needed by Churchmen for the success of their
work y how much more is it our duty, my brethren, not
to lean on the staff of a broken reed, which will run
into our hand and pierce it, but to rest on the broad
and strong foundations which our blessed Master
marked out for us at first, and on which the Church
has rested, under every form of government, in the
midst of the severest persecutions, and on which she
must chiefly rest, whether the State grant or withdraw
its favour. To talk of an established Church in this
Province at this time is one of the idlest dreams that
could enter into the mind of man. The words found
indeed in the Statute Book apply to the time when all
officials and most of the colonists were actually Church-
men. Emigration and other causes have reduced that
statute to a dead letter ; and the legislature, by the
admission of all, deals with us exactly on the same
footing as with all other religious bodies under the pro-
tection of the State. I would not wish it otherwise ;
for what can be a more invidious and dangerous posi-
tion, than to be the Church of a small minority, caressed
and pampered, and perhaps corrupted by State patronage,
whilst all our fellow-Christians, equally worthy of assist-

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

ance with ourselves, are willingly giving their hard-
earned money to the building of their churches and
schools, and to the support of their clergy, and are
denied other assistance or favour. On this ground it
may be said that we have paid dearly even for the
glebes granted to us by the Crown, which have yielded
more odium than profit, and have contributed to foster
the injurious suspicion that the clergy of our Church are
paid by Government, and have some secret support, of
which nobody can give any account. And valuable
as has been the aid of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, it is clear to me that whenever a Church
is rooted in the affections of its people it ought to
sustain its own clergy, to build its own churches, to
establish its own schools, and to consider itself as
much bound to provide for its spiritual wants as the
father of every family is bound to labour for his chil-
dren’s daily bread, and to educate and send them out
into the world to make homes for themselves. Where
the settlers are poor, and unable to provide the whole
salary of a clergyman, their richer brethren should assist
in bearing the burden ; but it is a shame and a scandal
that this burden, after sixty years of assistance, should
be laid on charitable people in England, and especially
on servants and poor agricultural labourers. It would

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

have been greatly to our credit had we volunteered to
take some of this burden on ourselves ; this, however,
is perhaps not to be expected from human nature • and
we naturally cling, as others have done before us, to
the dole of good money, and shrink from the trials and
privations, to which its withdrawal may expose us.
But even if that withdrawal should lead to a temporary
abandonment of some missions, I think it would be
better to be a real honest Church, of somewhat smaller
dimensions, doing our own work, and paying our own
way, than to have the mere shadow of an establish-
ment, and to be clinging to a real pauperism, with the
affectation of a respectability that does not belong to
us. The Society at home has very properly determined
that our love for the Church shall be tested. It has
withdrawn from us three hundred pounds a-year, and in
the beginning of next year it will certainly make a
farther reduction ; and we must expect that this with-
drawal will continue until we are left to maintain our
own Church by our own exertions and endowments.
I must rely on you all to make this fact as widely
known as possible, and to endeavour to show your people
how reasonable it is that they should be placed on the
same footing with all other bodies of Christians, as the
Judicial Committee have said, c in no better, and in no

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

worse position.5 As to many of you, possibly, accus-
tomed to a different system, and clinging to the memo-
ries of earlier days, this may seem a discouraging
statement, I shall endeavour to set before you what may
be considered reasonable grounds of hope for the time
to come.

In looking back to the early history of this Province,
one must see that the circumstances, which led to the
founding of our Church here, were purely exceptional.
The Loyalists took possession with a zeal sharpened by
persecution, and full of a determination to preserve to
the uttermost the rights of Church and King. They
were for the most part vigorous and determined men,
and it was considered a proof of disloyalty to be any-
thing else than a Churchman. The power of the
government was great ; Churchmen filled all the offices
of State and reaped the benefit of the connection. From
1786 to 1814, or later, everything seems to have been
in their hands j and many went to church, having no
places of worship of their own , e ady to float securely
on the tide of court-favour and emolument. Yet when
one narrowly examines the records of those days which
remain, the traditions of the period seem to be all of
the Georgian, none of them of a primitive and catholic,
character. The State Church, the assistance of the

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

Government, the air of worldly respectability, were much
thought of ; but the reverent, loving care of God’s house,
the ready self-denial, and the careful celebration of
Christ’s Sacraments, were, I fear, too little regarded.
At all events, the following facts seem undeniable
From the beginning, there was no daily prayer such
as the Scripture speaks of, and the Church orders;
celebrations were infrequent; neither baptisms nor
marriages were commonly performed in church, as the
Prayer Book appoints ; fonts there were none ; the
vessels for the Holy Communion were of the poorest ;
pews were universally sold at high prices ; the poor and
the middle classes were alienated by the exclusiveness
of the wealthy; burial-grounds were often unconse-
crated ; episcopal visits were few : how could it be
otherwise when the State appointed, at first, one bishop
for the two Canadas, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Newfoundland? The arrangement of the churches re-
sembled, in all external features, the worst patterns of
dissent ; and the offerings to the clergy were few. Even
at Fredericton, at first, nothing was offered ; and, after
several years’ service, only £30 a-year was promised.

1 In mentioning these facts, I pass no censure whatever upon the
Loyalists. I make no doubt, had we been in their position, we should
have felt and acted as they did.

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

Thus this entire leaning on State assistance would
have proved the ruin of the Church, had it con-
tinued ; and it doubtless injured it in a great degree.
There is not one of these points, on which some im-
provement has not been made, though, unhappily, many
still lean on the broken reed of State aid, and do not
believe even in themselves, much less in those powers
and gifts which our great Master and ascended Lord
has granted to His Church, and has never withdrawn
from her. Surely, unless we are perfectly infatuated,
and blind to every sign of the times, we must see, by all
that is daily passing around us, that to lean on the
State, or on politicians of any party, or even on the
donations of our brethren at a distance, is to proclaim
our conviction that the Church in this Province is not
worth the pains and trouble by which every religious
body in the Province, save our own, defends, supports,
and maintains its own religious convictions.

But to pass to another and important subject. You
may, naturally, expect something from me on the sub-
ject of the Lambeth Conference, and on the reasons
which prevented my attendance at that great assembly.
I may say, therefore, first, that had his Grace the Arch-
bishop required my presence as a matter of dutiful
obedience, I should, without delay, have complied with

2 6

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

his command. The subject coming before me, however,
through his kindness and consideration, in another
form, it was left to me to judge whether I deemed it
desirable to attend or not. At the time fixed for the
Conference, I had issued notices for many confirma-
tions, and the clergy had prepared their candidates;
and I was unwilling, without very strong reasons, to
postpone such confirmations, as I must have done, for
a whole year. Further, with the utmost deference to the
wiser judgment of the bishops who urged his Grace to
summon that assembly, it appeared to me that in con-
sideration of the vast distance from England of many
of the colonial dioceses, and the grave importance of
the step contemplated, a longer time should have been
allowed to give the matters selected for deliberation
full consideration, and to obtain, if possible, the judg-
ment of the colonial bishops generally, and of their
clergy (and indeed of the laity also, if the decrees of
that council were intended to carry with them the force
of general consent), on the subjects calling for the judg-
ment of so august an assembly.

Looking back to the first great council of the Church,
I see it stated in the Inspired Word, that in a time of
great anxiety and much discussion on points partly
ceremonial, and partly doctrinal, not the Apostles only,

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

but cthe Apostles and elders came together to con-
sider of this matter ; 5 so that the second order in the
ministry was not excluded from the deliberation. What
part the laity took in the matter is not clear ; but it is
certain that the final decree was adopted with their
consent, being issued in the name of the c Apostles,
elders, and brethren,5 and that c the whole multitude 5
were listeners to the addresses of the Apostles. I am
well aware that what was perfectly practicable at that
early period, when the members of the Church were
few, may at the present time be practically impossible.
But 1 see no insuperable difficulty in collecting within
a reasonable time the judgments of the colonial dioceses
on any given subject, before proceeding to a more full
discussion of it by the general assembly. Above all, it
appeared to me unwise to gather together from the ends
of the earth bishops of the Anglican communion, some
belonging to an established Church, some to a Church
partially connected with the State or in a very anoma-
lous position, and some to a Church wholly unconnected
with the State, without distinctly stating the purpose
for which we were called together, and the subjects to
be considered. Grave reasons, the force of which I do
not presume to impugn, may have prevented this course
from being adopted ; but I am obliged frankly to con-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

fess to you (with the possibility that some of you may
think me mistaken) that when no subject whatever was
named for discussion, and when only three days were
allotted for deliberation, according to the notice first
given, I deemed it impossible that in so short a time
a large body could come to a satisfactory conclusion
on points, with regard to which the members of our
Church throughout the world might well look for wise
counsel from the whole assembled episcopate.

That my apprehensions were not without foundation
appears to me from the fact that can hardly be dis-
puted, that the encyclical letter, which I gladly signed,
to avoid even the appearance of disunion, contained
little beyond what we all profess to believe and teach,
expressed in general terms, and did not in any way
touch or attempt to settle, as the first council of the
Church clearly did settle, disputed questions of cere-
monial or of doctrine.

Admitting that some of these points might be unlikely
to be settled by such an assembly at one meeting, one
point there was apparently ripe for deliberation ; and
if that matter had been appointed for consideration,
nothing would have prevented me from joining the
conference. I allude of course to the unhappy position
of the Church in Natal, placed under the supervision of

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

-9

a bishop who has openly impugned the genuineness
and authenticity of certain books of Holy Scripture-
who denies (in his work on the Epistle to the Romans)
both the eternal punishment of the wicked, and the
security of the happiness of the righteous (thereby, as
I conceive, impugning the truth of our Lord’s words) ;
who is said to have taught, that our Lord is not a
proper object of worship ; and who has been requested
by the general voice of the English episcopate to resign
his see.

I do not deny that there are legal questions relative
to the temporal position of such a bishop, which the
assembled episcopate need not, and might not be com-
petent to discuss. But I should fearlessly maintain
that it can never be said of any Christian Church, that
it is its duty to leave the consideration of all spiritual
questions to the civil power; or that, if legal and
spiritual questions are unfortunately mingled together,
the Church can be absolved of participation in the
sin of heresy, if she does not openly, distinctly, and by
all legitimate methods, declare that she will not hold
communion with any one, especially with a pastor,
who denies any of the fundamental principles of Chris-
tianity. If there be one principle common to all
Christians throughout the world from the very first, it

3°

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

is c that all men should honour the Son, even as they
honour the Father.’ Consequently, if we worship the
one, we must worship the other. How, then, can we
admit to communion one who denies both ? c for he that
denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.’ Con-
sidering that the last words of our Lord from heaven
commend a bishop of the Church for reproving heresy,
and censure another bishop for suffering it, I look with
fear and trembling, not at the trial of Bishop Colenso,
but at the trial, before God and the world, of the Angli-
can Church.

It must be recollected, that if anything can be safely
said of the Anglican Church, it is that it has never been
contented with defensive teaching. Its whole aspect,
since the Reformation, has been controversial, and
anti-Roman. The one object of the incessant attacks
of most of its members of all parties, is the Pope of
Rome. Many of its divines seem incapable of preaching
a sermon on any subject without some hard names
given to Roman Catholics. Is all this zeal, then, to ex-
pend its force on one form of error ? Whatever Roman
Catholics may have added to the old faith, at all events
they believe, in common with ourselves, in the fall of
man, in our redemption by Christ, in the genuineness
and authenticity of the canonical books, in the eternal

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON. 3 1

punishment of the cursed and the secured happiness of
the blessed, in the Trinity in Unity, and the worship
due to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In these funda-
mentals we are in union with them, and because we
disagree in other and important points with the Roman
Church, are we to allow one who denies that which is
common to all Christians to be considered in full com-
munion with us, whilst we repel those who are guilty
of no such blasphemy ? This is no question, be it
observed, of the legal title, and temporal status, and
salary of the offender; it is a question of the very
foundation of all Christian teaching.

The question is this : Can we communicate with our
Lord and adore Him at the same table with those who
deny Him ? If we can, I see no reason for withholding
Christian communion from the Mahommedan and the
Jew. But if this be unscriptural and anti-Christian,
then it seems to me that a more necessary subject
could hardly be imagined for a collected body of Angli-
can Bishops, than the proof that such accusations are
true, and the steps which should be taken, if they be
true, to purge ourselves from all participation in such
errors. Further, I fear, lest by refusing to deliberate on
so awful a subject, and by throwing all the burden on
the civil power, we may be held guilty of placing the

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

spiritual powers of Christ’s Church in abeyance, and of
laying the truths of the Christian revelation under the
feet of the world, and of representing them as secondary
to the temporal accidents of worldly fortune and posi-
tion. I think that the question of communion with
Bishop Colenso may be properly separated from the
mode of trial to which he has been subjected. The
powers of a Metropolitan in the English Church have
been so seldom called into exercise against a Suffragan,
the mode of trial has been so little defined, and the
authority of general canon law is so confessedly diffi-
cult a question, that I should have been thankful to
have had my knowledge on these points enlarged, and
the question of the regularity or irregularity of that trial
thoroughly discussed. But be that trial perfectly regular,
fair, unexceptional • or be it, as a learned prelate main-
tains, irregular and exceptionable, it appears to me that
difficulties in the way of trial and deposition, or error
in what has been done, if there be error, do not absolve
the English Church from the sin of communicating
with a declared heretic, and that this heresy appears to
be contained in the printed books, which the author
neither denies nor retracts. If after we had cleared our-
selves by our public acts, the law should step in, and
prevent trial and deposition by the Metropolitan, or it

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

should appear that the trial had was irregular, let the
law, or the offender against law, bear that burden, or
let the State be answerable. Our souls are free.

With these opinions on the subject, which I dare not
conceal, and which have not been hastily formed, I felt
that the conference had put aside the one point which
called for their immediate deliberation* and though
a declaration on the subject was signed by many bishops
present, it was not the official act of the whole body,
nor of a majority of the body.

Unless, however, I am very much mistaken in
reading the signs of the times, the day is not far
distant when the English Church must learn to lean
less on the temporal accidents of its position, and
more on the support which it may reasonably hope
for from the spiritual powers entrusted to it by its
great Head. For it can hardly be expected that a
nation which allows an established Episcopal Church
in England, an established Presbyterian Church and
an unestablished Episcopal Church in Scotland, an
unendowed and unestablished Roman Church in Ire-
land, and several powerful bodies of Christians leagued
together in opposition to all establishments in the
three countries, can maintain, with any show of
reason, or with general satisfaction, that the Church

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

of England is established, because she, and she alone,
teaches the truth of God. This is a position which
the nation, as a nation, expressing the national voice
in the national councils, would clearly shrink from
maintaining, and which, however theoretically sup-
ported by our older divines, is found to be more and
more untenable in practice since the days of William
the Third.

Looking at the matter from a national point of view
only, I fear that such a statement is nothing but a
fiction, however agreeable a fiction it may be; and
whilst I would not willingly move a stone of the
present establishment, I should be sorry to risk the
progress of the Christian faith on what formed no
part of our Lord’s original foundation of His Church.
But I am entering, perhaps, into a field too wide for
my duty ; and, therefore, I will pass on to speak of
what concerns us so nearly — the position in which the
Church finds itself in our own little Province.

Up to a very late period many among us, perhaps
the majority, supposed that we were part and parcel
of the Established Church of England and Ireland,
and that the Church was established in New Bruns-
wick. This not unnatural supposition was supported
first, by finding the words f established Church’ applied

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

to our Church in the provincial statutes; secondly,
by the grants of land made to our parishes by the
Crown, in consequence of which the representative of
the Crown has hitherto presented to all our benefices ;
thirdly, by the general appointment of Englishmen
to our missions; fourthly, by the support given by
the Venerable Society to our clergy; and, lastly, by
the notion generally entertained, that an Englishman
carries with him all the ecclesiastical law of England,
wherever he goes. This pleasant fiction it is time that
every one should abandon, as it has been demolished
by the inexorable logic of facts. The legislature of
this country has not ordered the words 'established
Church5 to be erased from the Statute Book, but it
deals with our Church on the same terms as with every
other religious body. Grants of land, which have been
also made to other bodies besides ourselves, remain,
but the general wishes of our people are evidently
averse to the appointment to benefices remaining in
the hands of the representative of the Crown. The
appointment of Englishmen only to missions has been
reversed under my Episcopate ; and the majority of the
clergy consists now of persons born in the colonies.
The support given by the Society is being gradually
and permanently withdrawn ; and the highest judicial

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

court known to the realm has declared that fin all
colonies in which there is an independent legislature,
we are in no better position than any other religious
body, and in no worse/ It seems now to be generally
admitted among us that there is no established Church
here in the sense in which there is an established
Church in England. But the State has gone further
than this. It has declared that the bishop’s letters
patent must not be taken as conveying the coercive
jurisdiction which they professed to convey, and it has
left to the bishop the title which the Queen conferred
upon him, the incidents of a corporation, and an
undefined spiritual and pastoral care. Such being
the facts, which can hardly be denied, what is our
relation to the mother Church, or by what bonds are
we connected with it ? I should answer, by stronger
bonds than kings or parliaments can supply. History
does not teach us, especially Church history, that
nations and countries are preserved in their faith
solely by courts of law. The three great Creeds were
not framed by lawyers, nor were they debated in par-
liaments. The canonical books of Scripture were
not settled by jurists. Though our Church has been
called, in derision, a Parliamentary Church, its liturgy
is derived from very different sources ; and though the

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

Parliament ratified the Thirty-nine Articles, it did not
frame them. Courts of law did not prevent the
success of the designs of Philip and Alva on the Low
Countries, nor of James the Second on the Protestants
of England. So long, therefore, as the reformed
Church of England at home, and her branches abroad,
acknowledge the same standards of faith and practice,
we shall be united by the same bonds which knit our
forefathers in communion, though the accidents of an
establishment may not remain.

If there be any doubt or suspicion on this head,
ought not all reasonable men to be willing to learn
from experience ; for is there any safer or more trust-
worthy guide ? It is now more than eighty years since
the United States became independent. The breach
between the mother and the child took place under
manifestations of exceeding bitterness towards the
Church of England, for almost all Churchmen were on
the side of the king’s government ; yet, notwithstanding
that severance, and the total disruption of all connec-
tion between the two countries, the Episcopal Church
has grown up, perfectly independent, except that she
received her episcopacy through Scotland and England,
that is, from one Church unestablished, and from an-
other established ; and yet in spite of so many circum-

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

stances adverse to union, the Church of the United
States is in closer bonds of communion with the
Church of England than ever. Prelates and pres-
byters meet on equal terms in both countries; our
general conditions of communion are the same ; our
Prayer Book and Articles, in the most important
respects, are the same ; and all this without one
court of law or one act of parliament having any in-
fluence on the matter. With this remarkable fact
lying at our very doors, why should we imagine it a
work of great difficulty, in a colony, where it is to be
hoped that no such temporal difficulties will occur again,
to preserve the spiritual union between the mother
Church and our own ? Or why should we imagine that
on an appeal to the decrees of the Privy Council our
whole faith and our entire spiritual condition depends ?
It seems to show very little reliance in ourselves if we
cannot hope to be, at least, as loyal to the Prayer Book
as the republicans of the United States. Monarchy
and the decrees of the judicial courts have done nothing
to retain them in their spiritual allegiance. We have,
again, a like experience on the British territory. All
the dioceses of Canada, without any question of party,
have accepted the situation; have acknowledged that
there is a distinction between their temporal position

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

and that of the mother Church. Colonial acts, ratified
by the Imperial government, have ensured to them
entire freedom ; the law officers of the Crown have
refused to advise the Queen to issue a mandate for
the consecration of a bishop there j and they have all,
without one exception, framed such rules and regula-
tions as tend to keep them in union with the doctrines
and rules of the mother Church. Where there is so
large a field of experience open to us, on both sides,
shall we learn nothing from it ? Shall we allow mere
suspicion of unworthy motives to override all the teach-
ing of facts ? Supposing it were the design of any one
or more bishops, or any number of clergy, to destroy
the doctrine of their Church, or to tyrannize over the
consciences of any of their brethren, could they have
invented a more preposterous plan than to call together
representatives of all the clergy and laity elected
annually for this purpose? The bishop, who presides
over the synod, is but one amongst many, and he has
no legislative power. Even if the clergy were willing
to forge chains for their own thraldom, the laity, who
have equal votes, may surely be trusted to preserve
liberty. But if neither clergy nor laity can be trusted,
in what a helpless state of imbecility and ignorance
does this yoke of tyranny on the part of the bishops

4°

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

suppose clergy and laity to be ? The whole, however,
is a mere illusion, contradicted by all the known facts
of the case, and grounded on the meanest and most
unworthy suspicion of others. I shall, therefore, close
my remarks on what seems, by some, to be still re-
garded with an inveterate and unworthy distrust, which
I do not pretend to understand, with the following plain
intimation of what I believe would be the result if the
diocese should refuse to submit to synodical action.

i st. We should be no nearer a temporal connection
with the Church of England than we are at present.
What prudent person can fail to see that the Church
of England will, probably, in a few years, be less
closely connected with the State than she is now?
Every new legislative measure, such as the proposed
abandonment of church rates, the disestablishment of
the Irish and now of the West Indian Church, tends in
that direction. Whether these measures become the
law of the land or not in this year, the animus of
the measures, supported by large majorities, it is im-
possible to mistake ; and there is every reason to
apprehend that a reformed House of Commons will
proceed faster, rather than slower, in the same direc-
tion. The same general tendency of opinion is di-
rected to the colonies, and expresses itself by the

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

distinct declarations of the highest legal authorities,
to the effect that powers supposed to be vested in
bishops have no legal existence; that we are not an
established Church ; that we are in no better position,
as regards the law, than any other religious body in
the Province ; in fact, the plain English of it is, that
we must shift for ourselves, rely on our own exertions,
and make our own rules of discipline; and that so
long as we do not contravene the civil law, and keep
within the letters of the rubrics of our Prayer Book,
neither parliaments nor courts of law will interfere
with our freedom of action.

Now, after all, if we possess any energetic and
independent spirit, is this an unfavourable position ?
Very far from it. We have advantages, far greater
than the Church in the United States ever had, to
begin with, and we have not the odium resting on
us of having been on the losing side in a bitter
political struggle. We have their energy and prudence
before us; and the example of our brethren, under the
same monarchy, to guide us; and we have no feeling
to contend with on the part of bishops, clergy, or laity,
for separation from the mother Church, but rather for
a close and permanent union. What phantom is it,
then, that we are so afraid of?

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

But, further, if the diocese refuse to petition for
the incorporation of a synod, we have no discipline,
no legitimate rules of action. The provincial sta-
tutes are worse than useless, and the English law is
not applicable here. Oaths and vows are, indeed,
always binding on men of honour- but the Church
requires that offenders should be dealt with by law.
Persons accused ought not to be condemned by
the Press before they are heard : justice requires
that the accusation should be substantiated by
witnesses- and that after lawful trial, and sufficient
proof of guilt, sentence should be pronounced by a
proper officer. We all admit the propriety of this
method in our courts of law. Are we so devoid of
understanding, that rules cannot be framed in the
Church which will ensure the punishment of guilt, and
yet protect the person of the offender from tyranny?
It is next to impossible that, in a duly constituted
synod, a bishop should ever play the tyrant ; for he
must obtain the consent of a majority of both orders ;
and in any important matter, the vote would always
be taken by orders, not by a bare majority of votes.
The question is, whether you will have the decision of
the whole Church represented by her communicants,
lay as well as clerical, or whether you will submit to

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

the dictation of a few irresponsible persons, assuming
powers, which the Church has not given them, and
denouncing every one who dares to differ from them.
For twenty years I have refused, on principle, to submit
to this ; for twenty years I have borne accusations and
insinuations in silence, and have rested my justification
on the good sense and good feeling of the whole
diocese. If the clergy and laity think me in error,
they have abundant opportunities for making their
sentiments known. But I can calmly, though humbly,
appeal to my own conscience, and to the just sentence
of One who will hereafter render judgment and justice
to all, without respect of persons, that I have not
sought to crush, by the strong arm of power, these
whose opinions differ from my own; that I have
conferred benefices and honours on those who gave
no support to my own views of truth: and if I have
done this when I was in a position of greater inde-
pendence, I must be less likely to do mischief when
met by the strong check of continual public discussion.
However, it is for the diocese, not for me personally,
to wish for the establishment of a synod. No man,
as he grows old, desires more labour and trouble ; and
if it be generally distasteful, I can live very well
without it. It is the diocese that will be shut out

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

of a common bond of brotherhood, and deprived of
the advantages that accrue from common consultation,
and mutual co-operation in a large field. With England
we are likely to have less, rather than more, commu-
nication of this nature.

There is one other point which I cannot wholly pass
by, but on which it cannot be expected from me that
my words should be many. In all the dioceses of the
United States, in Canada, and in many other colonial
sees throughout the world, provision is made for the
election of a bishop. In our case, everything at present
is left to chance. We cannot tell whether the Queen
would appoint. We are sure that there is no lawfully
constituted body to make known your wishes, and the
wishes of the laity; and the only thing that seems
certain at present is a lamentable confusion, and
possibly a tumultuous and hasty decision. Whether
this be your wish in such a case, yourselves must
determine. In such an event, my spirit may be far
from the conflicts and passions of earth, and my voice
and counsel may be alike powerless to assist you. But
for the sake of the Church which I have loved, the
brethren on whom I have laid my hands, and the con-
gregation which I have served, I pray God to preserve
you from the evils of a hasty, tumultuous, and ill-

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

considered choice. If there be anything that should
be done ‘ decently and in order/ surely it must be the
election of the Bishop who is to preside over you all.
The very mention of such an occurrence reminds me
that as it is not likely that all here assembled will meet
again at another visitation, I should take leave of you
now with words of earnest love for your common spiri-
tual welfare. If you value my counsel, if you seek the
common peace and growth of our small and scattered
flocks, you will not perpetually cast abroad the fire-
brands of controversy and strife in our own com-
munion. A politician of great ability, but bound by
no tie to our Church, has lately said in his place
in the House of Commons, that the English establish-
ment might last for ages if it were not for her own
internal dissensions ; and such words, proceeding from
such a source, may well be considered as a timely,
if not a providential, warning; and if they may be
so regarded by a powerful, well-endowed body, whose
roots have struck deep into the English heart, which
has the tenacity of one of its own venerable oaks
to sustain it, how much more impressive should the
warning be to us, who are more like exotics than trees
home-born in the soil, and of whom it has been said by
an authority, possessed of some keenness of observation,

4 6

A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY

— whether truly or not, I do not pretend to say, — that
the genius of the people at large in this country is not
favourable to the growth of the religion of the Church of
England. Be this as it may, there can be no reasonable
doubt in the mind of any prudent person, that we need
all the energy, all the wisdom, all the learning, all the
forbearance, all the unity of purpose that we can sum-
mon to our aid, to make us to stand at all, amidst the
conflicting elements which surround us. Every lawful
and Christian means you can devise is required to keap
our flocks from wandering, to teach and attract the
young, to fill their minds with catholic truth, with
sober, sound theology, to render them loyal and dutiful
to their baptismal covenant, and to induce them to re-
main steadfast in Apostolic doctrine and fellowship,
sound in faith and holy in life. Our disunion will
never promote their unity. Our mutual recriminations
will never increase their attachment. And our per-
petual attacks on the most numerous body of Christians
in the Province will never make us a strong, united
Church. This plan has been tried long enough in
Ireland to prove itself a total failure; and what con-
verts have we ever made to our communion in this
Province by incessant denunciations of the Church of
Rome, or by stirring up suspicion amongst the brethren ?

OF THE DIOCESE OF FREDERICTON.

If instead of attending to the great Apostle’s advice, to
make known the message of good-will entrusted to us,
f by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kind-
ness, by love unfeigned,’ we 4 bite and devour one
another,’ assuredly we shall be f consumed one of
another.’

We may ring the changes on Romanism, Ritualism,
and Infidelity every day of our lives ; but while we thus
live in the spirit of bitter controversy, our inner life will
decay, and love to God and love to our neighbour will
fade away from our hearts. God grant I may never
live to see the day, when it shall be said to the Church
of New Brunswick, as it was said to Churches planted
by Apostolic hands and watered by Apostolic prayers,
f God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it ; thou
art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.’

Extract from the Records of the Synod of the
Diocese of Fredericton, dated July 2, 1868.

‘Resolved, That this Synod fully concurs in the
sentence of excommunication passed on Dr. Colenso;
and solemnly declares that the Church in this diocese
is not in communion with him.5
Passed unanimously.

DELIVERED TO

THE CLERGY AND CHURCHWARDENS

THE DIOCESE OF ELY

AT HIS SECOND VISITATION

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER 1869

EDWARD HAROLD

LORD BISHOP OP ELY.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE CLERGY AND CHURCHWARDENS.

LONDON :

LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO.

1869.

LONDON: PRINTED BT

SFOTTISWOODB AND CO., NEW-8TBEET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

CHARGE.

My Brethren of the Clergy and the Laity —

Events in this Diocese, in the Church of this
country, and in the Church universal, have inarched
with rapid steps since I met you at my last visitation.
It is well for us to note the progress, both for warning
and for hope', for humiliation, and for thankfulness.
We are in the midst of moving waters, we cannot float
leisurely on their bosom without the certainty of being
carried outwards, and the danger of being lost.

To look close homeward first, many, and some of
them leading men, who met with Us in these gatherings
before, are now gathered into the eternal garner. I can
name but few, many more will occur to most of you.
One Archdeacon, Dr. Tattam, whose name is most
honourably associated with discoveries in Syriac and
Coptic literature, and whose kindliness and Christian dis-
interestedness will be long and gratefully remembered.
Two rural Deans, Bev. Algernon Peyton and Bev.
James Fendall, one the principal inhabitant of the Isle
of Ely, the other for many years representative of the
Diocese in Convocation. The Bev. Samuel Bickards,
Bector of Stowlangtoft, known as the friend of Keble,
and for all that was Christian and beautiful in his own
mind and character. Bev. H. II. Baber, Bector of

A 2

Clergymen
who have
died since
the last
Visitation.

Ordina-
tions of
Priests and
Deacons,
numbers
and quali-

Stretham, at the age of ninety-three, the father of the
Diocese, full of years and honours, whose labours in
Biblical criticism had met with well-merited success
before most of us were born. Bev. J. F. Thrupp, the
Vicar of Barrington, in the midst of life and of study of
the Scriptures, the fruit of which will live long after him.
Bev. J. W. Beamont, also a distinguished scholar and
student, called suddenly from work, the most diligent,
the most faithful, the most hopeful ; another Fellow of
the same great college, as well as an Incumbent in
this Diocese, the Bev. John Grote, Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity, and Vicar
of Trumpington, cut off in the vigour of an intellect
unequalled but by the gentleness of his spirit and the
refinement of his soul. These, and others like them,
have gone before us. I doubt if any Diocese in Chris-
tendom could point to such a cloud of witnesses passed
into the world of spirits in so short a time. I cannot
claim as amongst our own body, and yet I do not like
to leave unnoticed, the name of William Whewell,
Master of Trinity, for he too was in the midst of us,
and in every good work was willing to aid us. When
shall we see again one who had so trodden every field
of human learning, dived into the lowest depths and
soared to the topmost heights of science and philo-
sophy, and who yet could bend all to a belief in the
teaching of the Gospel of Christ ?

To proceed to the details of Diocesan work;

Of ordinations first : —

Since my last visitation, ]07 Deacons and 113
Priests have been ordained for this Diocese. There
appears to be no falling off either in number or in
quality. The average number of Deacons admitted in

these last ordinations is indeed somewhat larger than
in those before my last visitation. I have been fre-
quently asked to accept candidates who are without an
University degree, or who have not passed the Theo-
logical Examination at Cambridge. It is impossible to
foresee what a change in the Church or in the teaching
of our universities may necessitate hereafter ; at pre-
sent, I see no reason to depart from the long-established
custom of this Diocese.

The importance of maintaining every safeguard
against inefficiency, and of raising, if possible, the
standard of clerical learning and intelligence, is cer-
tainly as great as it has ever been. Knowledge never
was more widely diffused. Enquiry on religious
subjects is active everywhere. New difficulties, or old
difficulties revived, and new phases of philosophic
unbelief, are daily presented to us. It will be ill for
the Church and for the faith, if the clergy are not
equal to grappling with all of them. Yet there is no
doubt a rapidly-increasing apprehension that curates
wall find no adequate provision in their calling, that
so the supply at least of well-taught and well-quali-
fied candidates must fall off, and that a general de-
terioration in the ministry of the Church is imminent,
perhaps inevitable. We are in a state of such rapid
change that it is useless to attempt to forecast the
future. Certainly the present practice among private
patrons of selling their livings is most injurious to the
prospects of the unbeneficed clergy. The number of
livings in public patronage is comparatively small.
A curate with no family interest can have no one to
look to except his Bishop, and the Bishop has generally
not preferment enough to provide for one in fifty of

fications of
the candi-
dates.

Confirma-
tions, num-
bers, de-
vout be-
haviour,
subsequent
com-
munion.

those who have reasonable claims upon him. Hence
many men of fair abilities, and conscientious labour,
see little hope of attaining that moderate competence
which attends even half success in other callings of
life. This subject deserves the best consideration of
those who love the Church of God and desire its
welfare. If societies like the Curates’ Augmentation
Fund can hold out any sufficient aid to us in this
emergency, they should command our heartiest co-
operation and support. To my own mind, by far the
saddest thought is not for young men in the vigour of
health and life ; they may struggle with small incomes,
working for God and following the footsteps of their
Lord and Master ; but rather for those who shall have
grown grey in the office of the ministry, with a dreary
prospect before them of an old age which has no
strength for labour and no promise of support without it.
Most other callings in life, except that of the peasant
worker of the soil, either give power to lay by for
the future or offer the hope of a pension on retire-
ment.

Since my last visitation I have confirmed 15,615
young people. It is a little difficult to lay before you
in figures the exact comparison between this number
and the number which had been confirmed by me
when we last met on an occasion like this, because
the respective periods are unequal. The true compa-
rison may be made as follows. At my last series of
Confirmations, the number of candidates confirmed
throughout the whole- Diocese was 13,926, whereas at
the series of Confirmations before that, the number
from the whole Diocese was 12,328, showing an
increase of nearly 1,600 in f.ivour of the last. This

increase of itself proves that the rite is better under-
stood and more highly valued ; but the generally far
more devout behaviour of the candidates, and the
larger attendance of their parents and sponsors, gave
still stronger proofs of their pious and intelligent appre-
ciation of it, and of the pains which the clergy must
have taken to prepare them for its reception.

You will remember, that I suggested the expediency
of an early and comparatively private ministration of
the Holy Communion on the Sunday immediately
following a Confirmation, that so the newly confirmed
might, perhaps with their parents and sponsors, be
induced to communicate at once, and might not be
deterred by shyness or false shame from going forward
in the Christian life, and taking their stand in the ranks
of Christ’s full-grown servants and soldiers. I have
been very thankful to learn from those of the clergy
who have tried this experiment, that it has been for
the most part signally successful. One clergyman of
a town parish told me that not one of his candidates
was absent from the first communion thus adminis-
tered, and he expressed a good hope that they would
all be so led on to become regular communicants in
future.

The statistics of the Diocese, as far as they are
complete, show that the Holy Communion is now
ministered weekly in 29 parishes, whereas at my last
visitation the number was only 10. It is ministered
twice a month or oftener in 37 compared with 18 at
the last visitation. Monthly or oftener 303 against
246, less than monthly but oftener than once in two
months, 69 against 68 ; six times a year, 54 against
88 ; less than six times a year, 53 against 98. This is

Celebra-
tion of
Holy Com-
munion.

More fre-
quent Com-
munion.

a progress which gives much cause for thankfulness.
Still, however, there are 166 parishes in which there is
not yet even monthly communion.

Not long ago, I addressed a letter to my reverend
brethren, in which I spoke freely concerning frequent
communion, so that I have the less need to trouble
you with any lengthened remarks upon it now. It
is plain that those who have any true perception of
the meaning of this sacred ordinance cannot but value
its greater frequency. If, indeed, it were a mere
memorial of the death of Christ, intended rather to
impress the senses than to feed the soul, there might
be reason in administering it but seldom, lest its con-
tinual repetition should pall on the imagination, and its
constant exhibition fail to stimulate the mind. But
if the holy sacraments be ordained of Christ, that He
by means thereof may bring us into closer union with
Himself, that His presence may be sought in them,
and His quickening grace be found in them, then
how can we too often receive that which He so freely
gives P An outward sign of inward grace may
reasonably be made a grand solemnity, and its rarity
may add to its impressiveness, if it be only meant to
preach that grace, and be not also a means whereby
it should be received. But if it be a means for our
receiving it, and if the grace to be received be Christ
Himself, then, as without Him we cannot live, so I see
not how we can too much or too frequently desire it

The two extreme principles, of excessive fear and
excessive carelessness, sometimes strangely coexisting
in the same system, and sometimes even in the same
mind, have deprived the Church in every portion of
Western Christendom of this its hereditary birthright.

Whilst some are satisfied to witness the consecration
of the sacred elements and to join in the prayers, with-
out drawing near with faith to take that Holy Sacra-
ment to their comfort, others keep at a still further
distance, leaving the Church, when most earnestly
invited to come into it, and robbing their own souls of
that Bread of life which came down from heaven, that
a man might eat thereof and not die. It cannot but be
that the Church’s life and the love of Christians should
wax faint and feeble, when that which in early days
bound all together in one and brought all in one to
Christ, is by so many neglected, by so many millions
either thought not of at all, or thought of only with
apprehension and distrust. It is but slowly that we are
awakening, but I trust we are awakening, to a truer
understanding and a sounder spirit.

The fear of superstition, which keeps some from
welcoming an advance in this matter, should surely act
in the very opposite direction. Can it be superstition
to obey our Lord’s command, to follow the example of
His apostles, to seek Him where He has promised that
we shall find Him, to expect that what He has promised
He will give? Or rather, is it not superstitious to
change His ordinances, to fear to follow His bidding, to
innovate upon the customs which His inspired followers
observed, and to lose the grace and blessing by not
using those means in which He has assured us that
grace and blessing may be found P

In the same interval of time, I have consecrated six-
teen Churches in the Diocese (including the noble
Chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge) ; I have taken
part in the opening services of thirty-six other Churches,
restored or enlarged, and have consecrated twenty-six

New and

restored

Churches.

Parochial

Schools.

burial grounds or additions to burial grounds. There
are few things more encouraging than this great zeal
for Church-building. It shows that the Church is at
work, and that Churchmen are in earnest ; it gives
comfort for the present, and awakens hope for the
future.

The number of children educated in our parish
schools is reported as follows : —

Children attending Day Schools, boys, girls, and
infants, 44,392 ; children attending Sunday Schools
41,288. This shows that about 1 inlO-7 of the whole
population (480,716 by the census of 1861) attend our
Church parish schools.

The National Society reports that, on the average of
England, 1 in 13 of the population attended the Church
of England Schools in connection with that Society in
the year 1867.

On these figures it may be remarked ; First, that in
this Diocese we have more than the average number,
though our fen districts, the gang system prevailing in
them, and the straw plait elsewhere, are most unfavour-
able to school attendance. Secondly, that the increase
in England at large is very great in the last 30 years ;
for whereas in 1837 it was only 1 in 32, in 1867 it was 1
in 13. Thirdly, that this attendance of 1 in 13 through-
out England, and of 1 in 10*7 in the Diocese of Ely, re-
presents only the numbers of the poor children attending
Church Schools. We have to take into account besides
all the children of the rich and of the middle classes
who are under education at our schools and colleges
before we can estimate the true proportion of our
people who are educated by the Church, or who are

under education by some religious denomination, or
lastly, who are educated in some public or private
schools.

On the whole, though much remains to be done, the
figures must be considered as very encouraging. 1 in
10 '7 is the number educated in this Diocese in the
schools for the poor only, founded, supported, and
taught by Churchmen. The Duke of Newcastle’s Com-
mission in 1861 reported that the whole number of day
scholars in England (rich and poor, Church and dissent,)
was 1 in 7*7 of the whole population. Compare this
with the 1 in 10 *7 of the Church poor only in this
Diocese, and again with 1 in 6*27 of the population in
Prussia, where education is compulsory, with 1 in 8*11
in Holland, or with 1 in 9’0 in France, and we shall
hardly doubt that England has risen rapidly in the scale
of education by purely voluntary efforts, and that the
Church has done by far the greatest part of the work
which is doing. I am sure that not only the religious,
but the secular education of the country, will greatly
lose by the substitution of State for Church as the
Teacher of the people.

The reports of Her Majesty’s Inspectors vary some-
what in the different counties.

In Suffolk, for the most part, the report of the order
and efficiency of the schools under inspection is very
favourable.

In the counties of Cambridge, Bedford, and Hunting-
don, the Inspector complains of some deterioration in
the teaching, partly from the employment of monitors
instead of pupil-teachers, partly from the greater atten-
tion paid to what is called the commercial section of

each school, owing to the peculiar way in which grants
are now made by the Privy Council. #

A system of Diocesan Inspection has been organised
in most of the Archdeaconries, as supplementary to that
of the Government. As far as it has gone, it has
worked very well : and I believe that the clergy of
the parishes where Her Majesty’s Inspectors do not
visit, will find great advantage in throwing their
schools open to the Diocesan Inspector.

The question of schools for the children of those
engaged in commercial and agricultural pursuits, who at
present are more in need of a high education than any

* Report for 1868, by Rev. D. J. Stewart, p. 1. Some remarks
by Rev. M. Mitchell, in his Report 1867—1869, deserve the serious
attention of Christian teachers. He says, p. 5 : —

‘ There is much wanting in regard to politeness, I mean gentle
civilities of life, and that self-respect which manifests itself in respect
for others, both public and private, and which ackowledges obedience
to authority, because it is authority . . . “ To order myself lowly and
reverently to all my betters.” They (the boys) plainly expressed by
their manner that they knew no “ betters,” and still less how “ to
order themselves lowly and reverently.” Some persons seem to
imagine it an insult to suppose that they have any betters ; they for-
get that the Catechism applies to all orders and ranks of men . . .
Proper independence is one thing, vulgar assumption another.’

Another very important defect in school teaching, to which I have
more than once called attention, has been noticed by one whose
words always command respect. Miss Burdett Coutts has pointed
out that true Christian benevolence can never be learned, unless
the children in our schools are taught humanity to the brute
creation. How much of the misery of the domestic life, how many
of the violent crimes which disturb society, may be traced to cruel
disregard of animal suffering in early life, it may be hard to count :
but that Christian education will fail, if it neglects to train in habits
of mercy both to man and beast, is certain both from principle and
practice.

other class in the country, is one which has engaged
the attention of the Ely Conference and of our rural
deaneries, so that I perhaps have no need to dwell
long upon it here.

At the request of the clergy in the neighbourhood, I
was induced last year to organise and take part in a
Lent Mission at St. Neot’s and the surrounding parishes.
A large number of clergy of all schools and opinions,
from this and other Dioceses, joined in it. We had
services, sermons, and holy communion in most of the
Churches round ; the purpose being to awaken a livelier
and deeper interest in things spiritual and in the work
of the eternal world. I have generally had misgivings
as to all efforts to produce a temporary stimulus, and
am also apt to suspect anything which draws men
away from their own proper field of labour at home to
more exciting scenes abroad. I am, however, bound
to testify that the experience of the Mission at St. Neot s
appears to have been most encouraging. Both clergy
and laity witness to the up-growth of greater interest
in religion, to the quickening and deepening of spiritual
life among the people, as the consequences of this effort.
I am assured that it was not a mere transitory kindling
up of zeal, but that there have been continued results
which it is hoped will yet endure.

At a large gathering of English and Irish Bishops,
under the Presidency of the late Archbishop of Canter-
bury, it was agreed unanimously that it would conduce
both to order and to parochial efficiency, that laymen,
who are willing to devote some portion of their leisure
to the service of God and the welfare of His people,
should receive a commission from the Bishop, accom-
panied by public prayer, and the delivery of the Holy

Lent

Missions.

Lay

Readers.

Deacon-

esses.

Scriptures, but without the laying on of hands. It was
understood that in all cases the persons so admitted
should be volunteers, not paid officers of the Church.
Acting on this agreement, I have admitted several lay
readers, using a form of prayer more or less adopted in
other Dioceses in my own private chapel. However
desirable it may be that such services should be held
in Church, it would not be well, though it might not
be illegal, for the Bishop to use them there, when he
could not permit a similar departure from the rubric
to any clergyman in his diocese.

It is held by every competent commentator on Holy
Scripture, that St. Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy,
alludes to an order of widows or deaconesses, women
who assisted the clergy of the Church in religious and
charitable ministrations, and it is unquestioned by any,
that the offices of such formed part of the economy of
the Primitive Church. The very early work called
the ‘ Eecognitions of Clement ’ (lib. vi. c. 15), enume-
rates bishops, priests, deacons, and widows, as the
ordained ministers of the Church. The fourth General
Council, of Chalcedon, lays down special rules as to the
age and qualifications at which deaconesses should be
ordained (Can. 15). In the middle ages conventual
institutions took the place of parochial deaconesses ;
and though the Reformation swept away the convents,
it did not restore that which the convents had sup-
planted, the primitive order of parochial deaconesses.
In Germany very successful attempts have been made
to revive them. The Protestant sisterhood of Kaiser-
werth is well known, and cannot but be respected.

In the Diocese of London, under the patronage of
the late Bishop, the present Archbishop of Canterbury,

and of the present Bishop of London, a deaconesses
institution has been established and is now flourishing,
where work is doing in the neighbouring parishes and
where ladies are trained for like work elsewhere.

It is generally true, that a woman’s work is in her
own home, and in the circle which lies close around it.
That would be but little gain to the faith and to the
Church, which should make either men or women rest-
less and dissatisfied with the place in which God has
cast their lot. Home duties are very holy duties, and
we may well be jealous of anything which tempts us to
wander away from those who have the first and the
highest claim upon our services and our love. But
there are very many in the world, widows, orphans,
isolated spirits, whose work is wasted, unless some
fitting sphere be provided for it, and some wise direc-
tion given to it. There are many willing to work, who
do not know the way to it, and who would gladly
be guided. And the fields are indeed white to harvest,
but the labourers are few. In our large towns especially,
there are many desert districts, and many a hardened
soil, which cannot be reclaimed by man’s labour,
but which will often yield to the gentler influence of
women’s voices and women’s ministering hands.

The principle of the deaconess system is that those
who are employed in it act immediately under the
Bishop of the Diocese and the clergy of the respective
parishes, that they are not bound by vows, but that
they undertake their work for a certain specified time,
not to be curtailed except for good and sufficient
reason. I have given full encouragement to this system
in my own diocese, and I believe that I have the general
sympathy both of clergy and laity with me. I think

it the less needful to dwell at length on this subject, as
a committee of able laymen and clergymen, nominated
by the members of the Ely Conference, have drawn up
a clear and valuable Eeport upon woman’s work, and
that Eeport is already extensively circulated in the
Diocese.

Confer- And this leads me naturally to speak of the various

clergy and Conferences which have been held from time to time

Laity. jn the Diocese. It is known to all of you, that I have
long been an advocate for friendly gatherings of clergy
and laity, with special reference to Christian work and
Christian sympathy. In the first year of my episcopate,
I was satisfied to request all the Eural Deans to hold
chapters or gatherings of the clergy of their deaneries,
and afterwards to invite them all to meet me, together
with the Archdeacons, and the Dean and Chapter, at
Ely. From the very first, we began to discuss ques-
tions of mutual interest and to organise general work.

Very soon it seemed to be desirable that laymen
should meet with us, and I suggested that in each
deanery churchwardens and elected laymen should be
invited to join the deliberations of the clergy, and that
a layman from each deanery should accompany the
rural dean in his visit to the Conference at Ely. By
this plan we really obtained a very valuable and very
practical machinery. It cannot be denied, that much
interest has been raised by it in various portions of
the Diocese, that there has been much greater co-
operation between clergy and laity, and that much
real work has been set on foot.

Besides discussing many points of general and local
interest, such as the dwellings of the poor, the gang
system, and the straw-plait system, as prevailing in

some districts of the Diocese, and other similar questions,
we have, by means of committees and otherwise, set on
foot either action or active enquiry on the following
subjects.

1. Prayer. — A committee has sat to consider how
private and family prayer can be more encouraged, and
a manual of family prayer is in preparation.

2. Hymnology — A committee is now working with
a view to produce, if possible, some improvement, and
some greater uniformity, in the use of psalms and hymns
in the Diocese.

3. The education of the classes engaged in commerce
and agriculture. — The plan of founding a school of a
high class in the County of Cambridge has been pro-
pounded, and has met with considerable encouragement.
Shares to the amount of 3,000/. have been already
taken, and it is hoped that more names will soon come
in to us.

4. The Diocesan Pund for augmenting small livings,
aiding poor or invalid incumbents, and otherwise pro-
viding for the spiritual wants of parishes, has been set
forward. Its funds are now in a promising condition,
and it has called forth the liberality of individuals and
the funds of other societies, to the great benefit of many
of the poorer livings in the Diocese, as Well as for the
temporary assistance of poor and deserving clergymen.

5. The Missionary Studentship Association has been
supported and stimulated by our meetings.

6. We have had the subject of dilapidations before
us, and by means of a committee have contributed to
the solution of the difficult questions connected with it.

7. I have already alluded to woman’s work, and to
the Report of the committee appointed to consider it.

Arclii-

diaeonal

Confer-

ences.

The machinery thus happily set on foot, for co-opera-
tion of clergy and laity, and for diocesan work, was
not meant to be other than tentative, leading on to
whatever might be thought, on experience, to be a more
complete or more practical organisation. The clergy
very early expressed some dissatisfaction that I had not
invited either the whole of the clergy of the Diocese,
or at least a representation of all the clergy of the
Diocese, to meet me in Conference. I will not do
more than refer to all that was said upon this subject.
Suffice it to remind you, that I took great pains to
learn the feelings of the Diocese and the general wishes
of the clergy and laity, that I repeatedly consulted the
rural deaneries throughout the Diocese, (a) whether I
should summon a Diocesan Synod of all the clergy
of the Diocese, with a lay representation, or whether
(&), a Conference containing a body of representa-
tives of the clergy, and of the laity, should be invited
to meet from time to time at Ely or Cambridge ; or
finally ( c ), whether I should invite the clergy and laity
to meet at four different centres, so constituting four
Archidiaconal Conferences, which might be considered
as one great Diocesan Conference held in four divisions.

You will remember that the first plan, of a Diocesan
Conference of the wffiole body gathered at one centre,
was rejected by a great majority of the Diocese, in
the first instance, in favour of the second plan, viz. a
representative Conference, and that finally both the
first and second were rejected in favour of Archidiaconal
Conferences, it being still desired that the original
Conferences of Archdeacons, Rural Deans, and Laity
should continue to meet at Ely for practical work. The
discussion of this question lasted for more than two

years, a cause of delay which should not be regretted
if it has led us to a satisfactory issue. I need not re-
call to you that the consequence was our meeting this
time last year, at the four chief centres of the Diocese,
at which full 1,600 clergy and laity were gathered
together, our animated discussion of various subjects,
most interesting to Churchmen and Christians, and I
may add, our general good understanding and kindly
feeling towards each other.

It will very probably be said of us, that in all this
we simply met, talked, and parted. It does not follow,
even if we did no more, that we did no good. It is
surely a great good, that members of one family should
meet and learn each other’s thoughts and enter into
each other’s feelings. Our great isolation has been |
one of our greatest evils, and has led to our worst
misunderstandings. Moreover, we are confessedly at 1
present in the face of new and fast gathering dangers.
We are utterly unprepared to wrestle and cope with
them. Used each one of us to think for ourselves, or,
much worse, to think within the enclosure of the little
knot of minds gathered just round us, we have no
power to rouse ourselves up for common safety against
a common foe. If we are not to fall before, not one
foe, but many which are facing us, we must organise
and unite. I must ask your forbearance if I repeat,
even to weariness, that the English Church, if once the
state machinery should fail it, will be found to be
the least organised Church in Christendom, and so
the most likely to fall before higher organisations,
whether religious or irreligious. Yet, I am not in-
sensible to the necessity of doing something more
than talk. I value most highly the machinery which

B 2

enables us to meet ; but I am aware that sucb meetings
will weary, and so will be likely to flag and fail, unless
there be enough of practical thought and work to
engage and occupy. It is on this account, that, instead
of inviting a second Conference this year, I have pro-
posed that at this visitation we should hold a kind
of Supplementary Conference, debating matters of
general interest, so as to keep the principle alive, but
not formally gathering the Diocese into four centres,
as was done last autumn. A visitation is itself a
true Synod, and it is certainly not to be wished that
any such ancient meetings should be disused and done
away with, till at least something unquestionably better
can be substituted in their room.

I am very desirous also that what cannot be done in
large should be done in smaller meetings. I have
already mentioned the practical work which we have
been trying to do in our annual Conferences — Confer-
ences of limited size, at Ely. Euridecanal meetings may
do something ; if there be a general good will, they
do much. I am inclined to think that single parishes
can do even more. As Bishop of the Diocese, I have
been able, with the kind and active assistance of clergy
and laity, to organise meetings and other machinery
in the Diocese, in the Archdeaconries, in the Bural
Deaneries. It must rest with the clergy themselves,
with the aid of their most loyal parishioners, to do the
like in their respective parishes. I cannot doubt that
great strength would be given to the Eector of the
parish, if he could have a committee of the laity to
work and to take council with continually. For schools
and charities, for Church rates, for mission societies, for
the suppression of vice, for the maintenance of truth,

for the refutation of error, all ought to be working,
and all ought to work together. A Christian Church,
in which none but the clergy work for God, is alto-
gether an anomaly, almost a misnomer. Why! the
work of the clergy ought to be for the very purpose of
setting others to work. Now, alas ! it is too often
thought of as a substitute, not as a stimulus. And my
brethren of the clergy will, I am sure, bear with me
if I say that much of the fault has been with us. We
have worked, and, thank God, we are still working,
and it is the same with giving ; but we have been
contented to do our part, and not to impress upon
our people, that they are as much servants of Christ as
we are, that He calls as much for their labour as for
ours, that He claims their alms and their wealth as
much at least as He claims ours. I am sure we shall
never rise to the true standard of a Christian Church,
till we learn to gather round us other faithful hearts in
our own spheres of labour, and to get them to labour
zealously with us for the Church, for the poor, for God.
A clergyman wTho stands alone, may perhaps have more
of his own way, but he will surely do less to lead others
in the way to God. And, moreover, it will be his own
way only in a limited degree. If he can bring others
round him, and unite them with him, his power of
carrying his own schemes forward, and of establishing
his own influence, will be incalculably greater than if
he tries to work alone. In theory, churchwardens,
sidesmen, vestries, and the like, were meant in great
measure for this very purpose, viz., to work with the
clergyman in things spiritual and ecclesiastical. The
sidesman has become a thing of the past, the vestry
has other thoughts in view, the churchwarden mostly

Lambeth
Confer-
ence of
1867.

limits his attention to the fabric of the Church, and pos-
sibly its services. We want to revive and awaken the
heart-interest of true Churchmen and true Christians
in all that is doing in the Church services, in the village,
in the school, in the neighbourhood, in the Diocese, in
the Church at large.

I cannot pass from my own Diocese and our own
gatherings without a brief reference to that important
Conference of the Anglican Episcopate, which was held
by the invitation and under the presidency of the late
Archbishop of Canterbury two years ago. The express
purpose of that Conference was to unite, in common
sympathy and common worship, all the Churches in
full visible communion with the See of Canterbury.
There came Prelates from England, Ireland, Scotland,
from the United States, and from all parts of the great
continent of North America, from the West Indies,
from Southern and Central Africa, from India and
Ceylon, from China and Borneo, from Australia, New
Zealand, and from the South Pacific Sea. The numbers
were not great, not quite eighty bishops, but they
represented large Churches in every portion of the
world, all speaking the English tongue, and all of one
heart and voice, as Ministers and Pastors of the
Anglican Church. I venture to say, that there was
one undivided feeling, as there was one unbroken
utterance, for the true Christian and Catholic faith,
and against all attempts to water it down by ration-
alistic heresies, or to make it turbid by ultramontane
novelties. It was easy to reproach the assembled
bishops with having met only to talk ; we had no
purpose to act, where action would have led to no
end ; but we believe that a great end was attained in

bringing together from the four corners of the earth,
men who were of one mind and one soul, and who, by
their very concourse, were pledging themselves in all
coming time, to stand by their brethren and by the
Church, their common Mother, in contending for the
faith, for the truth, and for the love of Christ. I am
assured by American Bishops that the Lambeth Con-
ference and the Lambeth Encyclical Letter have pro-
duced a most beneficial effect in America, that Church-
men have been encouraged and refreshed by it, and
that even those of other communions have been in-
terested and conciliated.

He, whose fatherly voice summoned us to that assem-
bly, has been taken from us since. The chief pastor
of the great Anglican communion, who was so clear in
his high office, so gentle to every man, so faithful in
his service of his Saviour, so personally pious and so
publicly blameless, sank under the labours and anxiety
of his post, and has gone before us to his rest. There
can be little doubt that the Lambeth Conference and
the many questions connected with it shortened, per-
haps by many years, that valuable life ; but there are
few of us who would not wish to die as he died, in all
the freshness of mental and even of bodily power, and
in the full devotion of heart and life to the service and
the faith of Jesus. Let us at least pay this tribute of
honour and affection to his memory.

And now to speak of even more public and more
pressing matters. Ho one can doubt that the year
1869 will be long remembered as one of wide and
deep interest in the history of the Church of Christ.
Two great events are likely to mark it out for ever.
This year, for the first time since the Gospel came into

General

Church

Questions.

The

Council at
Kome.

the world, has a Christian nation solemnly and delibe-
rately— I say not now whether wisely or not — cast off
its connection with the Christian Church in one integral
portion of its empire, has diverted to secular purposes
all that which had been set aside for more than 1,000
years by the piety of forefathers for the maintenance
of the worship and the faith of Christ. This year, for
the first time also, has the Eoman Patriarch summoned
by his own sole authority a Council of the Universal
Church for decision of important points both of practice
and of faith.

The events themselves are deeply important and
deeply significant, but the circumstances attending
them are even of greater moment and convey a more
significant warning.

To speak first of the Council to be held in December :
The Pope, without consulting either the civil powers
or the other Christian Patriarchs, has professedly sum-
moned the whole Christian Episcopate to meet at Borne
on the Festival of the Immaculate Conception. All
Eoman Catholic Bishops have received a direct invita-
tion. The Eastern Churches have been invited also,
but the invitation implies that they are in a state of
schism. The Bishops of the Anglican Communion,
and those of the Scandinavian Churches, are either sum-
moned under the general head of all Bishops, or under
the general head of Protestants and other non-Catholics ;
or, lastly, they are not summoned at all.

It is known pretty generally that the great Eastern
Patriarchs have declined to be present, and this refusal
will doubtless involve the non-attendance of the whole
Eastern Church. The chief reason given for refusal is,
that the Patriarch of Borne, though formerly admitted

to be first in rank among the Bishops of Christendom,
has no authority over other Patriarchs or over any
prelates or persons out of the bounds of his own
original patriarchate, that therefore he has no authority,
without consulting his brother Patriarchs, to summon
a general council, and that a council so summoned by
him cannot be truly general or oecumenical. To this
main reason others have been added, such as that the
day appointed is the feast of the Immaculate Concep-
tion of the Blessed Virgin, a feast not acknowledged by
the Churches of the East, commemorative of a doctrine
unknown to primitive antiquity, never accepted by the
universal Church, and not believed by any but the
Churches of the Communion of Rome to be scriptural
or true.

It appears, that some individuals amongst ourselves
prbpose to attend the Council, accepting the general
invitation to Protestants and other non-Catholics, an
invitation, be it observed, not only to be present but
also to submit. Lastly, there is an opinion among
some members of our own communion, that, as all
bishops are summoned generally, we, the Bishops of
the Anglican Church, ought to attend, both, that we
may signify our readiness to unite with all our fellow-
Christians and so to promote the unity of Christendom,
and also that we may assist those who, in the bosom of
the Roman Church, are desirous of promoting whole-
some reforms therein and of paving the way for the
future re-union of the whole Body of Christ.

Whatever would tend to true and sound re-union of
the divided members of that sacred Body, whatever
might witness our sympathy and brotherly regard for
those who desire to reform abuses and promote greater

purity of faith and practice in any part of the Church
of Christ, must appeal to our truest and best Christian
interests and affections. If I could see that our attend-
ance would have this effect, I would go to the Council,
if I was to be the only Anglican Bishop or Presbyter
there. But are there not reasons on the other side,
which must weigh against such a course and weigh
even more heavily than those which are in favour
of it?

In the first place, the Eastern objection that the Pope
is not the Patriarch of the Universal Church and so
has no right to summon an Universal Council is of
great importance. To attend a council summoned
by him as Universal Patriarch would be a distinct
acknowledgment of his supremacy as the sole Vicar of
Christ, and therefore a distinct confession that our
own position is a false position, that we are rebel-
lious subjects and so justly excommunicated and un-
churched by him. I will not dwell now on the day
and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, though
it is of vast importance.

But, once more, is it true that we are really invited
in any form whatever P There has been no direct
invitation to us or our Metropolitans, as there has been
to the Patriarchs and Bishops of the Eastern Churches.
We may consider ourselves to be comprehended in the
general summons to Bishops, but it is plain that the
Pope did not mean to comprehend us. It is plain for
this reason. The Pope has summoned the Bishops of
the Boman Communion whom he has placed in sees in
England, Archbishop Manning and others whom I
need not recount. Now, most certainly if we are
English Bishops, they are not ; and, on the other hand,

if they are the Catholic Bishops of England, we are not
only heretics and schismatics but not Bishops at all.
We claim to be the Catholic Church here, and that
our Bishops are the Catholic Bishops. This the
Roman Patriarch denies, he has constantly excommuni-
cated us and treated us as deposed, he places other
men in our Dioceses, treats them as Bishops, denies
our orders, denies even our baptism, scarcely treats us
as Christians, much less as joint members with himself
of the great brotherhood of Christian bishops. It is
plain, therefore, that by summoning the Bishops of
the Roman Schism in England, he has rejected us.
But are we not to accept his call to us as Protestants,
to go and listen to the discussion and accept the
decrees of the coming council of Rome? Whatever
be the true meaning of the term Protestant, whether
it only belongs to the German Lutherans, who pro-
tested against the dictum of the Diet of Spires when
it declared that no reform was needed in the Church,
or whether it belongs to all those Christians, who
protest against certain assumptions of the Roman
Pontiff and certain tenets and practices which are
enjoined as necessary terms of communion with them ;
the letters apostolic of Pope Pius IX. are plainly
addressed only to non- Catholics. The Protestants there
invited are a portion of those described as a-Catholici.
The title of the document is 4 Sanctissimi Domini nos-
tri Pii Divina Providentia Papse IX. Litterte Apo-
stolicse ad omnes Protestantes aliosque a-Catholic.os.’
Of these he speaks as 4 estranged from Catholic
unity and truth ’ and as 4 not professing the true faith
of Christ.’ These he invites to submit themselves to
the Roman Patriarch, and to return to the one fold of

Christ. Now, whether we call ourselves Protestants
or not, we certainly do not acknowledge that we are
a-Catholici , non-Catholics, estranged from Catholic
truth and apart from the true faith of Christ. I cannot
therefore think that we can accept this invitation of
the Pope addressed to Protestants, even if we were
ready to submit ourselves to the see of Pome.

One other reason has been given why we should
obey the summons. It is that whether the Pope be
or be not the Supreme Head of the Church Universal,
he is at all events Patriarch of the West, that we as
Western Christians are in his Patriarchate and that there-
fore we are bound to yield him honour and obedience.
To this it must be replied that British divines have
constantly contended that Britain was never legitimately
within the Patriarchate of Pome. The thirty-seventh
Article, which every clergyman subscribes at his ordi-
nation, declares that ‘ the Bishop of Pome hath no
jurisdiction in this Pealm of England ; ’ whereas if
England were within his Patriarchate, he would be
clearly entitled to patriarchal jurisdiction therein. The
Canons of the Great Council of Nice, as preserved in
the translation of Puffinus, confined the jurisdiction of
Pome to the suburbicarian Churches,* which certainly
did not extend to Britain or even to Gaul. There had
been a Church in Britain long before the date of this
council, which Church did not owe its foundation to
Pome. When the heathen invaders drove the British
Christians into the fastnesses of Wales, Cornwall and
Cumberland, no doubt Pope Gregory the Great sent

* Ut apud Alexandriam et in urbe Roma vctusta consuetudo ser-
vetur, ut vel ille iEgypti, vel hie, suburbicarium ecclesiarum solli-
citudinem gerat. — Ruffin. Hist. i. 6.

over Augustine to convert those heathens, and we owe
a deep debt of gratitude to the Roman Bishop and to
the Roman missionaries for reviving the truth and
the faith in our land. But even if the Church had
wholly died out in Britain before Augustine came,
which certainly was not the case, still the re-conversion
Jaf a country once Christian by a mission from another
Church would not of itself make that reconverted
country a province of the Church which had con-
verted it. There was a case of this kind in the East.
Illyricum had been, as it was said, under the jurisdic-
tion of Rome. It was overrun and subjugated by the
heathen Bulgarians and called from them Bulgaria. It
was then converted anew by Greek missionaries, and
so claimed by the Greeks as within the patriarchal
jurisdiction of Constantinople ; but the Legates of the
See of Rome claimed it as belonging to the patriarchate
of Rome, because it had before its conquest by the
heathens been subject to Rome, and so did not cease
to be so though reconverted by Greeks : and this claim
was pressed to the utmost, even though the claim was
the real cause of that great schism between the Churches
of the East and the West which for ten centuries has
never been healed.

Once more, it was the acknowledged right of
patriarchs to ordain and confirm the metropolitans and
through them all the bishops of their patriarchate :
but the English Archbishops were not ordained or
confirmed by the Pope, but by provincial synods,
according to the special direction of Pope Gregory
to St. Augustine,* and there was no true exercise of

* Greg. M. Epist. ad Augustin. Opp. c. iii. p. 1163.

patriarchal authority by the Bishop 'of Borne over
•the Bishops of England for full ten centuries after
Christ.*

To me then as at present advised it seems that the
Patriarch of Borne has no authority to convene a
Council of the Universal Church, that he has no
authority to cite English Bishops to a council of his
own patriarchate, and moreover that he never has
cited us, either as Catholic Bishops or as Protestants.

Lastly, if we were to go, when all the Eastern
Bishops decline to go, we must be so greatly outnum-
bered by the Bishops in full communion with Borne,
that though our presence would give strength to what-
ever might be decreed by the Council, because we
should thereby acknowledge its Catholicity and its
authority, yet our voices would fail to arrest or even to
modify any one of its decisions. If every Bishop from
the home, the Colonial and the American Church
should be present, the number of our names together
would be scarcely 150. The Boman Bishops will no
doubt number some 700 or 800. f Could we hope,

* See Palmer, Episcopacy Vindicated , sect. 10.

1 The relative numbers of the different portions of the Christian
Church are not easity ascertained. It is estimated that there are

1 60.000. 000 in the communion of Rome. In this number, however,
the Church of Rome is wont to reckon all the baptized in France,
Spain, Italy, Austria, and in the Spanish and Portuguese settlements
in South America. Yet the adhesion of a large proportion of the
people in these countries is only nominal, of many not even
nominal. In the Eastern Church there may be somewhat more than

80.000. 000. Anglicans number somewhat more than 20,000,000 ;
not reckoning Wesleyans or other semi-attached sects. The Scan-
dinavian Churches have about 3 or 4 millions. I cannot calculate
the number of Lutherans, German Evangelicals, Presbyterians and
other Protestants. They amount to somewhat like 70,000,000.

that any efforts on our part, seconded though they
might be by those who have a good will for reform,
would avail to arrest the strong ultra-montane tendency
of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, even if we were per-
mitted, as there is certainly no hint that we should be,
to a fair and equal deliberation and right of suffrage
with our brethren !

Yet, though it seems impossible that the Anglican
Bishops can attend the Council to which they are not
asked, there is good reason why we should all watch
its action with interest, and, I may add, with prayer.
It cannot fail to have a great effect for good or for ill.
It must tend either to reform and reconciliation, or
else to greater isolation and more hopeless division.
We may willingly accept the assurance that the Pope
summons the Council with an earnest desire that it
should be productive of spiritual benefit to the Church :
we may well hope and pray that such spiritual benefit
may, through the overruling providence of God, be
finally worked out.

I turn to the question of the Irish Church. There
can be few questions more difficult to approach in an
impartial spirit. That what is now taking place in
Ireland must have a wide influence in England and in
Christendom no thoughtful man will deny. Whether
it be looked on as a motive power in itself or as a
mere index of the direction in which other powers are
moving, the lesson will be the same. Without doubt
the case of Ireland is very exceptional. It was perhaps
the weakest outpost of a great fortress, and may have
been very hard to defend : but it has fallen, and the
force which laid it prostrate is moving onwards. It
was weak, because it was apparently anomalous. In

Irish

Church.

theory and in fact* England and Ireland for seven cen-
turies have been one nation. The Church of England
and of Ireland has equally been one for the same seven
centuries. It was reasonable, therefore, that the Re-
formation of that one Church should run through every
artery of the whole body and equally permeate the
system on both shores of the Channel. This was the
natural theory : and the Tudor sovereigns, with some-
what Procrustean exactness, pressed upon the Irish
portion of the Church, not heartily in favour of it, that
reform which the English portion was in the main
most eager to work out. The one Church therefore
was uniformly rehabilitated at one and the same
time. But unhappily, the Irish people have never
been very open to English arguments, or very ready to
embrace English theories. They have never chosen to
think themselves one nation with England, and so have
never as a people acknowledged that their Church was
the same. Whilst therefore from the English point of
view, England and Ireland were one, and the Church
of the whole nation was the one Church of England
and Ireland from the reign of Henry II. to this day ;
yet from the Irish point of view, Ireland was an
oppressed nationality conquered and persecuted by the
English, with an alien aristocracy holding its lands, and
an heretical Church establishment collecting its tithes.

It is not unnatural that this view, which is that of
the Irish peasantry and in general of intelligent
foreigners, should commend itself to many candid
minds among ourselves, and that the one argument
of apparent justice to Ireland should with them prevail
over all arguments of the rights of property, of the
interests of the Christian Church, of the principles of

the Reformation, of the unity of the people and the
Churches of the two portions of the Empire, of the evil
of confiscating that, which had been solemnly dedicated
to God. I have published my reasons so much at
length for thinking that this argument does not reach
the question of the recent measure of disestablishment
and disendowment that I will not repeat them here.^

It is of little avail now to dwell upon the past.
The Irish Church is setting itself manfully to work out
the problem of its future constitution and future
mission. I hope that we in England, clergy and laity,
shall exert ourselves to the utmost to give them help.
ITow soon we may need help for ourselves no foresight
can tell ; but 4 Blessed is he that considereth the poor
and needy, the Lord shall deliver him in the time of
trouble ’ (Ps. xli. 1, P. B.)

Let us turn to the warning and the lesson for the
future. If England and Ireland be one nation, and if
the English and Irish be but one Church ; it is impos-
sible but that the disestablishment of the one, must
affect the interests of the other. In the first place, a
principle has been enunciated, never before accepted
in Christendom, that a nation can with all the solemnity
of law and equity throw off the Church and the faith
handed down to it from its fathers. In the second
place, the theory of Church and State is at least rudely
shaken, if not scattered to the winds. The theory was,
that Church and State were virtually one body with
two aspects — the Church in its spiritual, the State in

* See A Speech not Spoken : being a Letter to Lord Hatlierley on
the Irish Church Bill, by Edward Harold, Bishop of Ely. Longmans,
1869,

How does
the dis-
establish-
ment of
the Irish
Church
affect the
English ?

its temporal form. Hence it was but reasonable, that
the same power should legislate for both. The same
temporal Sovereign ruled over the whole nation, and
was supreme (not in things sacred where the supremacy
is with One alone) but as the last resort for justice
in every cause, and as reigning over all persons, whether
civil or ecclesiastical. Under that Sovereign were the
spiritualty and the temporalty : the three estates of
the realm (viz. (1) The Clergy, # (2) The Lords tem-
poral, and (3) The Commons) legislated for the whole
nation, whether considered in its temporal aspect as
the State, or in its spiritual aspect as the Church.
The union of Scotland with England and Ireland did,
no doubt, affect this theory, and that most mate-
rially : yet still in Scotland there was a Church estab-
lishment, though distinct from the Church of England
and Ireland, and the Presbyterian ministers had their
own general assemblies, and Parliament was supposed
to legislate for them in conjunction with their own
internal legislation for themselves. But we have now
what we have never had before, one integral part of
the whole nation, one of the three constituents of the
empire, with no acknowledged spiritualty, with no
Church aspect in the eye of the law. The theory of
the ancient constitution therefore is broken down, and
it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to rear up
another in its room. There may have been hardships,
there may have been evils incident to the former state
of things. The Church may at times have writhed
under the legislation of the State ; but the theory was

* The clergy were represented both in Convocation and by the
Lords Spiritual in Parliament, and either in one or both of theso
representative bodies constituted the first estate of the realm.

at least a plausible theory. The Parliament was the
laity of the Church by representation, and when Par-
liament made laws for the Church, it was at worst but
Church laymen overriding Church clergymen, and not
even wholly so, as there were clergy at least sitting and
voting in one of the Houses of Parliament, as well as
a Convocation, which might speak, if it could not always
act. But now, the Parliament can on no principle be
called the laity of the English Church, for the kingdom
of Scotland is professedly Presbyterian, and the king-
dom of Ireland has professedly no Church at all. Hr.
Arnold thought the admission of two or three Jews
into Parliament would make the theory of a Church
State no longer tenable : how much less tenable must
that theory be, now that in the eye of the law one-
tliird of the nation is of no faith at all. It does not
answer this to say that there have long been Roman
Catholics, Dissenters, Jews and even infidels in Parlia-
ment. Their presence might, no doubt, affect the
interests of religion, but in theory every portion of the
legislature and each tributary kingdom of the whole
realm was Christian and had a definite legally acknow-
ledged faith and Church. It is so now no longer.
Theories are not idle dreams, but underlie most substan-
tial realities. If you once ignore or eradicate a prin-
ciple, the practice which is based upon it is not likely
to outlast it long.

That, however, which seems most instructive is the
mode in which the Irish Church Bill was originally
agitated and finally carried. The move did not begin
in Ireland. Great as the anomaly of the Irish Church
may have been, it was not that which galled the Irish

peasant, and it gave no uneasiness to the Roman
Catholic gentleman. The real Irish grievance was and
is the land : the Irish peasant had no animosity to the
clergyman of his parish, whom he found a kind and
liberal neighbour : the Irish Roman Catholic gentleman
had no desire to see the clergy of his own communion
become more powerful and unrestrained. The spark,
which really kindled the flame, was lit in England.
English dissent, not Irish Romanism, was the true
motive power. Then naturally, when an English orator,
of singular power over popular gatherings, made a
progress through Ireland and preached a crusade
against the Church of Ireland, an excitable people was
easily roused to think that an intolerable grievance
under which it would otherwise have rested easily and
safely. Next came a gathering of many interests. One,
no doubt, at the head of all, and shedding lustre upon
the rest, was that body of men, who felt keenly the ills
and the old oppressions of Ireland, who looked on the
Church establishment as one, wellnigh the last, remnant
of an ancient system of wrong, and who would therefore
at all hazards sweep it away. Let us do all honour to
them, whether we think with them or against them.
But there rose up with them the Liberation Society in
England, the strength of Welsh methodism in Wales, the
Scotch jealousy of State influence in religion, not wholly
separated perhaps from dislike of prelacy in Church, the
Irish priesthood, of course ; and with all these, though
truly sympathising with none of them, came in the
dragging dead weight of irreligion, scepticism, unbelief,
indifference, which will always be found to go against the
religion of any nation in which it may exist. There was

another power at work over a very different body of
men. Not a few earnest Churchmen were and are in-
different, if that word be strong enough, to all Church
establishment and all connection between the religion
and the government of a nation, and that on very
different principles. Some, for instance, think that the
disestablishment of the Church in England, as well as
in Ireland, would settle many of our differences, espe-
cially those about ritual and the like, if the laity could
take matters into their own hands and assert their own
rights — a thought that might surely be dispelled by one
glance across the Atlantic where in the American
Church the disputes seem to run higher even than with
ourselves. Some again, taking the very opposite view,
believe that, the restraints of the law being removed,
progress in any desired direction would be easier and
authority less powerful against it ; not remembering
that an established Church gives greater freedom than
any other body can do to the individual will, and that
every disestablished Church, unless it means to go to
pieces, must increase the limitations and machinery of
order and so in reality restrict individual freedom.
Some have thought that by disestablishment the clergy
would gain greater power and exercise a stronger
priestly influence, and so rather sigh for it than fear it,
forgetful, once more, that the disestablished Church will
never stand, unless the laity be called in to give it
counsel and goodwill and strength.*

* That the clergy will have far more political power, if the Church
be disestablished, there can be no doubt. At present not one clergy-
man in fifty tries to exercise political influence ; and those who do
rather hinder than advance the cause they advocate. Besides which

Still, the fact remains, that all these several interests,
either openly or virtually, have been arrayed against
the Irish Church, and it is no great wonder if, as an
establishment, it has fallen before them. But what we
have to ask ourselves is : Are not almost all these same
interests arrayed against established and national
churches, everywhere and of all kinds, and is not the
combination powerful and dangerous to others and to
ourselves P

Once more, in the debates on this great question,
principles came out which must have a great effect
upon the legislation of the future. Is it wrong to say,
that the principle has been recently asserted that all
property ultimately and of supreme right centres in
and belongs to the commonwealth, and, for high rea-
sons of state justice or of state necessity, may be
recalled and reabsorbed by the nation P This, as I
believe, is laid down even of private property, and it is
laid down, and has been acted on as regards what most
of us here present believe to be far more sacred than
private property, viz., wealth, which has been given
and bequeathed by pious men and which is held in
trust by the nation, for the honour and glory of God
and for the salvation of the souls which God in Christ
has redeemed to Himself.*

the clergy are now an integral part of the national constitution, and
so simply move in accord with the whole national machinery. Dis-
establish the Church, and instead of being a part of the national
machinery it will be a force within the nation distinct from the
nation, and so powerful that no other force will be able to balance it.
Statesmen, as well as Churchmen, may well ask, which is the safer
and the more profitable groove, for such a power to work in.

* If the endowments of National Churches be not considered as
bequests from pious individuals (as most of them were) but as grants

Once again, when the Bill had been passed in all its
main provisions, an effort was made to preserve some
of the property hitherto belonging to the Irish Church,
not for the purposes of the Irish Church itself, but for
the granting of houses of residence surrounded by at
most ten acres of land to the clergy of the three deno-
minations (so called) in Ireland. It was thought, that
this would have been a measure of peace, and would
have removed jealousy, because it would have shown
that there was a real desire to establish equality, that
it would have conciliated the Roman Catholics without
injuring anyone, that it would have benefited the
whole country by rendering the Roman priest a man
of higher status and greater self-respect, so more inde-
pendent and less likely to be the slave of ultramontan-
ism or the inciter of faction and disaffection. But
this again was rejected on the ground that the great
principle of the bill was to divert the revenues of the
Church from all religious purposes, at least from all
purposes connected with the teaching of religion, and
especially that, whatever the real feelings of statesmen
might be, those, who returned the majority of the
House of Commons, returned it with the express purpose
of destroying endowments, not of re-distributing them.

If we turn from the history of the Irish Church to
consider what has been silentty going on as concerning
the English Church, the lesson is much the same.
Church rates are gone : the marriage law of the Church
has been altered and much more serious alterations
are contemplated. Education is gradually but steadily

from the nation itself, it appears to me that on that hypothesis the
nation is still more bound to respect the obligations to retain for God
what it has solemnly devoted to God.

Influence
on the
Continent.

removing from the influence of the Church, as witnessed
by the Endowed Schools Bill,* the renewed efforts to
throw open, not the universities only, but the teaching
office of the universities to all Churches and Sects, and
the proposals so frequently made for a general system
of secular education among the poor. I need hardly
conclude by reminding you of the motions, promised in
the next Session of Parliament, to remove the Bishops
from the House of Peers and to destroy the Established
Church in Wales.

All this, however, is not peculiar to our own country.
There seems a wave running through the whole of
Christendom, and threatening to subvert all its national
Churches. In Spain and Italy, the Church and the
civil power are at open war : all the Boman Catholic
countries are, more or less, similarly affected ; and the
widespread infidelity of the German Protestants has, it
is said, led, not so much the unbelieving people, as the
clergy, now at length returning to faith and religion,
to look on separation from the government as the best
prospect for the not very hopeful future.

What all this is leading to cannot be foretold : but
does it not seem from all such indications of the horizon,
whether we look at the bright streaks of awakening
zeal and rekindling faith, or at the darker clouds of
unbelief, irreligion and indifference, does it not seem as
if we were near upon the dawn of a new era, in nations
and churches ; so that very probably we may be

* I wish to speak of the Endowed Schools Bill as much needed,
and after the amendments admitted into it, if fairly carried out,
likely to be a great boon to the country : but its express intention is
to lessen the direct influence of the Church on the education of those
affected by it.

passing as much into another atmosphere and another
world, as those who lived in the times of Constantine,
or of Charlemagne, or of Gregory VII., or of the Kefor-
mation.

Are we then to sit down quietly in the immediate
expectation of that change, which is commonly called
disestablishment ? Or, even if that should seem inevit-
able, are we to despond P Surely neither the one nor
the other. If the English portion of the National
Church should follow the fortunes of the Irish por-
tion, there can be little doubt that the change will be
but part of a still greater change, which will affect
society from the lowest root to the topmost bough.
We may watch such a change, but we may perhaps be
unable to avert it.#

I cannot indeed agree with those who would forbid
all speaking and deprecate all warnings concerning
disestablishment, who would impose profound silence
on us all, lest by speaking out we should raise a fury,
and then not be able to lay it. It is too late for silence
now : but it is not too late for counsel nor for work.
In the first place, let us consider, that, if we mean

* It may be worth while to notice what a friendly observer in
another country says on this point. ‘ That the Church in Ireland,
England and Scotland will be in twenty years vastly stronger than
at present, that its disestablishment, even with robbery, will be its
deliverance, we do not doubt. Nevertheless, the instinct of the
Lords is true. Disestablishment will not hurt the Church, but it
will, in due course, end the Peerage, and most likely the Crown.’
— American Churchman.

Whatever may be the truth of this prophecy, it undoubtedly points
to a probable danger, and yet gives to Churchmen a not unreason-
able ground of hope.

What oar
own atti-
tude

should be.

Good and
evil of
Establish-
ments.

Union of
Church
and State
modern or
ancient.

to retain our present position in the nation, we must
have that purpose clearly in view, and we must be true
to ourselves. I have pointed out the many different
interests which are evidently combining against the
National Church, many of which are aiming to destroy
its establishment, its nationality, its very existence. It
is useless to ignore them, or to deny their power. One
or two of them could do but little ; but they will unite,
as they have united ; and we must encounter them alone.
Yet I believe, that we can resist them all, if only we are
agreed. But agreed at present we are not. Some are
restless in one direction, some in another. Many see
evils and troubles in the present condition of things, and
hope that any change will surely be for the better, little
regarding how great must be the danger if we once
loose the moorings of fifteen centuries and launch out
into new and untried waters for the future. From the
time of Constantine to the time of the American Revo-
lution, Christian nations have ever been in union (more
or less closely) with the Christian Church. We are
now in the nineteenth century about to try the experi-
ment of dissolving that union for ever.

Of course, there may be and there are certain dis-
advantages and certain disabilities resulting from the
connection between Church and State. The question
must be, whether the disadvantages are not so greatly
outweighed by the blessings, that it would be madness
to renounce the one for the sake of being free from the
other.

Is it not true, that one reason for the apathy and
sometimes more than apathy of one portion of the
clergy results from the vague impression, which so
widely prevails, that the union of Church and State

is the product of the Reformation, a purely modern
invention, like other novelties to be distrusted, and so
perhaps readily discarded? The famous work on
4 The State in its Relations with the Church,’ has done
something to deepen that impression. The very
eminent author, who exhibited the magnificent picture
of a youth passed in blameless purity and diligent
study, and of an early manhood combining devotion to
his calling as a statesman with deep reverence for the
Christian faith and devout attachment to the Christian
Church — the very eminent author, I say, in defending
the constitution of his country and the position of his
country’s Church, devised or embraced a theory, that
every nation has, as doubtless it ought to have, a
national conscience, and that just as with an individual
man, it is the duty of that national conscience to choose
out the truest and purest form of the Christian Church,
to embrace it as its own, to defend and nurture it, and
to commend it to the acceptance of its whole national
life and being. I can well recall the joy and thankful-
ness with which I read the first edition of that work,
and the bright hope which it kindled, that its writer
was the coming man, destined by God’s Providence to
guide his country’s counsels, not as an ambitious states-
man, but as a wise and devout Christian. Yet, even
then I ventured to think, that the principle, on which
he based his argument, was one which was very likely
to give way. The action of the national conscience, so
conceived of, almost of necessity presupposes an unity
of the national will. The theory was simple enough,
when that national will was wielded by an autocrat,
like Constantine, or Theodosius, or Clovis or Charle-
magne, by a Bretwalda like our own Saxon monarchs,

The theory
of a State
conscience.

* c 6

The his-
torical
theory.

by a tyrant like Henry VIII., or even by a strong
oligarchical government, such as reigned in Britain
from the Revolution to the Reform Bill. But disperse
that unity by erecting a virtual republic, and find that
in the constituent members of that republic there is an
endless variety of religious and irreligious conviction ;
and the national conscience is bewildered in its choice ;
it can select no longer.

In place of the great statesman’s theory, however
beautiful and in some aspects of it true, I venture to
suggest that the light in which we ought to look at
this question is the light of actual history.

In the earliest ages it was the will of God, that His
Church should struggle onwards, unaided by earthly
power, and so that no one could say of it, 4 1 have
made this man rich ; it is through my protection and
patronage that the Church has made such way in the
world.’ But when it had penetrated and revolutionised
the whole Roman world, it was then His will that the
Roman Emperor himself should acknowledge its influ-
ence and accept its teaching. The Emperor, partly
from a belief in the truth of Christianity, partly from a
conviction that it was safer to conciliate what it was
impossible to subdue, wisely as it has been thought,
and piously too, incorporated with national govern-
ment Ecclesiastical rule, with national life, the spiritual
life of the Christian Church. But the natural tact of
statecraft suggested to skilful rulers, that by thus pro-
tecting the Church, they were not only tolerating but
fostering a vast power, an imperium in imperio , the
extent of the growth of which no wisdom could calcu-
late. Naturally therefore they claimed a restraint on
that which they thus took into their bosom. The

whole system of civil legislation in matters ecclesias-
tical from the Code of Justinian downwards has sprung
out of this. The Church for centuries not only ac-
quiesced in all this, but accepted it thankfully. Chris-
tians had long looked for the time, when kings should
be nursing fathers, and queens be nursing mothers of
the Church ; and till the time when Gregory VII.
claimed authority over Norman Kings and German
Emperors, whilst they rebelled against him, it was
hardly felt that a Christian Kingdom and a Christian
Church could be possibly arrayed in hostile attitude
one against the other.

The universal dominion of the Koman Empire was
very favourable to the unity and Catholicity of the
Christian Church. The one Church which spread
abroad, retaining all its unity when opposed and
persecuted, could still continue one and undivided
when fostered beneath the co-extensive shadow of the
one great empire.

Yet even so, there was early developed a tendency
to a kind of nationalism in the various provinces of the
Empire and the various patriarchates of the Church.

Before the time of Constantine it is very doubtful
indeed whether patriarchates had been even rudimen-
tarily developed. The primitive constitution of the
Church with bishops, as its rulers, assisted by their
council of presbyters and tended by the body of
deacons, had indeed gradually developed into some-
what of a more hierarchical character. Great sees,
like Rome and Alexandria and Antioch, had assumed
authority over the smaller sees around them, and the
rise of provinces and metropolitans is discernible at
the time of the Synod of Nice.

Develop
ment of
National
Churches.

The connection with the Eoman Empire rapidly
developed the constitution of the Church. As the
Empire was distinguished into great civil divisions,
with special rulers over each : so was it soon with the
Church. The Empire had 14 dioceses or exarchies,
and so the Church had her dioceses or patriarchates
each under its own Patriarch or Primate ; every
Diocese again was divided into Eparchies or Pro-
vinces, eacli under the rule of a Metropolitan, and
lastly every Province contained many Parcechice (cor-
responding with modern Dioceses), each govermed by
its own Bishop.* There was in all this the germ of
national Churches. Each great Diocese was in fact a
nation. For instance, Gaul was one Diocese, Spain
another, Britain another, Africa, Egypt, Thrace, Asia
Minor and the like.f If we look back at early history,
we shall trace a strong characteristic difference between
the Churches of these various divisions. The Church
of Alexandria had a marked diversity of tone from
the Church of Antioch. Eome and Africa again
had marked features of difference. As in the same
Church individual Christians, though agreeing in the
main truths of Christianity, will differ on many points
of practice and of doctrine, so was it with these
different patriarchates, exarchies, or national Churches.
The Church was one, and the Empire was one : but

* Rome with the suburbicarian Churches constituted one Diocese ,
and there were thirteen exarchies besides. The word Diocese which
is now purely ecclesiastical was originally used to designate a
division of the Empire, and was adopted from the Empire by the
Church.

I See Crakanthorp, Defensio, c. xxii. § G5. — See also Ap-
pendix B.

.■

there was early a very clear distinction between
Eastern and Western Christianity, and there grew up
similar distinctions between different portions of the
East and of the West.

Facies non omnibus una,

Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum.

It was inevitable that this diversity should be inten-
sified, when the Koman Empire fell to pieces, and the
various Gothic races entered upon its inheritance.

In the middle ages, we recognise distinctly the
different types of Italian, Spanish, German, Gallican,
Anglo-Saxon, and afterwards Anglo-Norman Church,
even whilst all in union with and under subjection to
the one central see of Eome. In the East the differ-
ences are at least as noticeable ; Greek, Eussian, Chal-
dsean, Armenian, Coptic, Abyssinian ; some marked
even by more than sisterly diversity. It may perhaps
be inaccurate to speak of each such national body as a
separate branch of the Church ; but when the differ-
ences are discernible in the very earliest ages and
never vanish even under the autocratic reign of Eome,
it is inevitable that we should find some language,
which can express it, and that language, which dis-
tinguishes them as great National Churches within the
still wider circuit of the Church universal, is perhaps
both the truest and the least offensive.

Now, what I am coming to is this. We, here, have
inherited a great National Church. It was probably
brought to us by the Apostles themselves ; them, that is,
or direct emissaries from them. We received it, honoured
it, protected it, encouraged our people to give to it,
and secured to its possession that which thus was given.

The

English

National

Church.

This is true of it even from the days of the Apostles to
this day. We did more than this. When all Christen-
dom was shaken by the cry for reformation, we main-
tained our right, if others refused reformation, to reform
our own customs and ordinances. We believed, that
all the Western Church had been tarnished by the rust
of ages, and that it needed cleansing and refreshing. If
other National Churches would not join with us, we
claimed a right as a Nation and a Church to cleanse
our own ways, ever within the limits that we did not
reject one article of the Christian faith as taught in
Scripture, as maintained in primitive ages, as embodied
in the Creeds, as set forth in the first and undisputed
General Councils.

Our national life then and our religious life have run
on in one united current from the first century to the
nineteenth. This is the real history, and so the real
theory of the so-called union of Church and State in
England. It is true, that the theory, the idea, the name
of a National Church have degenerated by degrees into
the notion of an Established Church. And when once a
new name is attached to anything, there will be efforts
made to account for the existence of that name. Men
speak and think at present, as though the nation, find-
ing some twenty or thirty different forms of faith, woke
up one morning and examining each form witli micro-
scopic accuracy, at last selected one for itself, and esta-
blished it for its own. Bring this theory to the test of
history, and it fades at once away, Britain received
the Gospel and the Church from Apostolic times, her
princes cherished and her people loved that Church.
For eighteen centuries, of weal or woe, of conquest or
defeat, of national change however extensive and radi-

cal, the Church and the Nation have gone on together,
lovingly entwined into each other’s arms and hearts,
nay, incorporated into each other’s beings. It may
be true, that there are some amongst us now, who do
not love the Church and who doubt both its sacred-
ness and its truth ; but, when, as surely is the case, the
great bulk of the nation do love it and do believe in it,
is it to be quietly contemplated, that the great National
Church of Apostolic days, accepted, honoured, pro-
tected, regenerated, should be cast over and rejected,
after 1,800 years, in which it has taught, civilised,
purified, blessed, sanctified and saved the people of this
land P This, and nothing less than this, is involved in the
disestablishment of the Church of England.

It is, be it remembered, one thing for a nation, by
its national conscience and religious acumen, to have
chosen for itself a form of Church, and then, on a
change coming over its spirit, to reject that form : but
it is a very different thing for a nation to have received
the faith and the Church by direct mission from above
and by the good Providence of God, to have held to it
for 1,800 years, and then by one decree of a Parlia-
mentary majority to cast it off for ever.

And to pass from principles to practice : can anyone practical
doubt that the 7rou rrrm of a Church acknowledged and workms <>f
defended as the National Church is vastly superior to Church,
that of a Church which the nation has thrown off, from
which it has taken the means of sustenance, gradually
gathered through successive generations, and which it
has left to the precarious charity of each separate con-
gregation of worshippers? Should ever the revenues
of the English Church be taken from it, in all proba-

bility the clergy in the richer parishes in towns, will be
better provided for than the clergy in the same parishes
now. There will be danger, even there, that such provi-
sion will be gained by a supply of aesthetic services for
the upper or of popular preaching for the middle class,
whilst the searching out the poor, the outcast, and the
ignorant will be rewarded only by the answer of a ’good
conscience towards God. There will be danger too
that, instead of the multiplying of free and open
Churches, which is now in progress, it will be necessary
to return to the old, but certainly not time-honoured,
custom of exacting pew rents. But the great danger,
and I scarcely see how it can be avoided, is that so
many of our parishes consist almost wholly of the poor,
and that there it will be impossible to provide an effi-
cient ministration of the Church. Take first our coun-
try parishes ; how many of them have no residents but
peasants and small farmers, how many, if they have
one resident squire, have no one else ready to contribute
to the support of a clergyman.

Now suppose a village of this kind with a population
of 1,000 souls. There will probably be not much more
than 200 households in such a place. Would every
household on an average contribute more than Id. a
week, i.e. 4s. Ad. or say 5s. a year, to provide pastoral
ministrations and Church services P This would make
50/. a year for the provision of one, whose education
might have cost him 3,000/., which sum, if he had sunk
it upon his life would yield nearly 300/. a year.*

* It would be impossible to make even the intelligent among the
poor understand, that an educated gentleman with a wife and family
might actually die of want on an income which would keep 3 or 4
peasants’ families in abundance. Yet probably most of us have

Perhaps the farmers could give a little more ; perhaps
the landowners might come forward more liberally ; but
where could we look for such a provision as would restore
to our 10,000 villages, now so largely blessed with it,
the constant residence of a highly educated Christian
gentleman, whose one end in life is to seek the present
and eternal welfare of all within the reach of his
influence P *

The poor population of the towns would present a
still darker picture and a still harder problem. We
cannot penetrate them even now, nor pierce the dark
curtain spread between them and the light of Chris-
tian and civilised life. With all the efforts lately made
for Church extension, with the new churches and new

known instances in which such deaths under such circumstances
have actually occurred.

* It is wrell known to everyone that even now the poverty of the
clergy makes it more and more difficult to obtain a full supply of
highly educated men. Education is one of the most expensive of
the necessaries or luxuries of life, and parents will not educate their
sons for a calling in which the return is altogether inadequate to the
outlay. Political economy will come in even to our most sacred
thoughts and views. One survey of Europe will show that the
standard of the education of the clergy in the different nations
varies as nearly as possible with the means provided for their main-
tenance. And then there is another law, which must be taken
account of, acting in direct unison with the last, viz., that, where
the clergy are not taken from the most educated classes, they do not
mingle freely with those classes, they do not understand their wants
or their difficulties (no : nor the difficulties of the half-educated classes
neither) ; and the result is alienation of the clergy from the laity,
priestly assumption on the one part, infidelity on the other.

If the clergy on the Continent, Roman Catholic or Protestant,
had been drawn more from the higher ranks; there would have
been a far greater check on their rampant scepticism than there can
be now.

d 2

parishes, new missions and schools, money gathered
from private bounty, money taken from cathedral
endowments and better management of ecclesiastical
funds, still the dense mass of half heathen souls
hidden in our alleys seems to grow denser and darker
before us at every step we take. Every nerve is
straining, and we cannot reach them yet. And if such
be our testimony : what is the testimony of dissent ?
Is it not this P that dissent cannot live except in the
suburbs where wealth walks out to air itself in luxury,
whilst the poor seethe in the deep recesses of the
factory lanes. We are all familiar with those statistics
which prove, that the voluntary system will not thrive
in the centre of our large cities, where there are only
operatives, but that it builds its houses of worship
where the tradesmen and wealthier class can aid and
support it. God forbid that I should say this in any spirit
of reproach either to the poor themselves, or to those
who would, but cannot, reach them. I am merely
reminding you of the action of a natural and inevitable
law. We have an enormous, rapidly grown and still
rapidly growing body of working men. The Church
and the Gospel have not kept pace with the people.
They are therefore, if not sunk in ignorance, yet too
generally brought up in utter indifference. If truth is
to reach them, it must be sent to them ; they will not
seek it for themselves, and least of all will they pay for
it. The blessing of a National Church, which has
ancient endowments, is that it has the mission and it
has in some degree the power to seek out those who
would never seek for it — to bring truth and faith and
eternity home to hearts which have shut out such
thoughts from themselves. The evil of the opposite

system is, that it can only give the supply where there
is the demand, and the demand is always the least
where the need is the greatest.

We know, of course, that the plan must be, if ever
we are obliged to have recourse to it, that there should
be a great central sustentation fund, that the rich
parishes and congregations should pay into it according
to their riches, and the poor according to their poverty,
that then there should be fair and equitable redistribu-
tion, having regard chiefly to the wants of poor parishes.
That this may work somewhat I do not doubt : but I
am assured, that already in the Free Kirk in Scotland
there is found to be this flaw in the machinery. A rich
congregation perhaps feels that 600/. a year is not
too much for its own minister. It will therefore
readily raise 600/. and contribute that to the central
fund : but if it find that, instead of 600/. being
paid back to it for its own wants, some consider-
able portion of that sum is retained for eking out
the contributions of other and poorer parishes not
connected with it, there grows up dissatisfaction and
disinclination to give, and the principle ‘ he that gathered
much had nothing over, and he that gathered little
had no lack ’ finds no real acceptance with them. If
this be so already, when the first fervour of secession
can hardly have grown cold ; what must we expect it
to be in future generations ? If it be so in the green
tree, what will it be with the dry ?

All my reverend brethren will not perhaps agree in
what I am about to say next. To me it appears a
great boon (though not without some drawbacks ;
what in this world is P) that we inherit a great code of
ecclesiastical law, founded on the ancient canon law of

the Church, which is binding on laity as well as on
clergy, not merely by mutual compact, but by the
national constitution and law. If there be a question
about churches or churchyards, marriages, or burials,
or aught besides, the answer is ready, viz., This and
this only is the law of this Church and Eealm. In this
way the clergyman is defended from the oppression of
a powerful layman ; the layman is protected from the
neglect or the self-will of an arbitrary rector ; and
not only the professed Churchman, but every English
subject, brought in any way into contact with Church
ordinances or Church property, is amenable to the law
ecclesiastical in all ecclesiastical causes. This must be
swept away with the disestablishment of the National
Church.

Is it no blessing to priest and people too, that not
only those who have a clear understanding of Church
and Church history, but every Englishman has hitherto
owned that the English Church is the Church of the
English nation, and that ' the parish priest is the recog-
nised pastor of all the parish ? The curate therefore
has no scruple, and will find no hindrance, when he
knocks at the door and enters the dwelling of rich or
poor within his sphere of labour. He need not argue
on the claims of his own Church, and so ask admission
and acceptance. From earliest ages the whole kingdom
has recognised the right of its own Church to watch
over its people’s souls ; and most, even of professed dis-
senters, will accept and welcome the visit of its
ministers. If once we cease to be acknowledged as
the Church of England by the realm of England, it
may be that we shall strengthen our own position,
indeed we shall be forced to do so ; but it will inevit-

ably be within narrower bounds. I say we shall be
forced to do so. At present, I believe, the great body
of the clergy deal with the teaching of their people on
a broad and free basis. They know, that there are
many among them on whom the Church has but a very
feeble hold, many who are Churchmen in name and
by baptism, but who care little whether they be Church-
men or dissenters or nothing at all. Yet for their souls,
as for all others, the pastor has to watch, as one that
must give account. It is but little that he brings argu-
ments about Church doctrines or Church ordinances to
such men’s minds. He knows that the time is short,
that eternity is near, that arguments may distract and
puzzle, that a soul may be ruined by the very process
in which a convert is gained — at all events, that time
may be lost, time never too long for bringing an
erring sheep home to its true Shepherd and Bishop :
and hence he teaches of sin and death and judgment,
and of Christ and grace and salvation ; and seeks rather
to reserve, than to set forward, that on which he may
excite controversy or awaken distrust.

It is so even in our teaching of the young. In our
parish schools we have children of dissenting parents,
as well as of Churchmen : we desire to give to all use-
ful knowledge, and still more Christian knowledge, and
we desire to give it as they can bear it : and though
we teach the Catechism, and a little more perhaps than
the Catechism, there is a general anxiety not to over-
load the young with anything which may puzzle young
minds, when the teaching at home is perhaps very little
like the teaching at school. I am not sure, that in the
Church at large this caution or reticence has not been
carried to excess. We heard but lately, how American

clergymen complain, that of the numerous emigrants
1 to America, the dissenting children are always found
; instructed in the grounds of their dissent, but the
i children of Churchmen are never found instructed in
the grounds of their Church manship. We had trusted
at home, perhaps too confidingly, in the wholesome in-
fluence of a Church atmosphere all round our youth,
and hoped, that, as they grew up, they would grow up,
not Christians only, as we had taught them to be, but
wise and faithful Churchmen also, by force of influence
and association and habit. Whether such hope is
realised even in those who grow up at home is a ques-
tion worth considering. It will plainly not be realised
concerning those who are thrown on the shores of
another land, where the Church has to struggle, as one
only among conflicting sects, and where each new-
comer must choose for himself whose he will be, and
where he must take his stand. And this plainly shows
what we shall be forced to do, if ever the wave reaches
us, which has just broken over our sister in Ireland.
We must inevitably narrow our position, in order to
strengthen it. There may be some gain in this ; but
surely there will be a grievous loss of that free, large-
hearted, large-handed, open spirit, which now charac-
terise the intercourse of the English pastor with the
rich and the poor, the young and the old, the wise and
the ignorant, the pious and the thoughtless, in his
many-coloured and too often much-wandering flock.
Everyone is ready to press such conduct upon him
now, and to cry out lustily if there be the slightest de-
parture from it. Who besides him is either willing or
able to practise it P It is his acknowledged position as
a pastor of the National Church which renders such

practice possible. And what a loss it will be, if ever
we shall find it impossible.

All are looking forward. The eye even of the The future,
least prophetic is straining itself into the darkness
of the future. With some, hope is uppermost : but
with many more, distrust. Bright visions of an
united Christendom, or of some more stable Church
of the future, are checkered with thoughts of still in-
creasing division, of a gigantic scepticism defying the
armies of the living God, and licking up like dust the
scattered forces of the faith. In every part of Boman
Catholic or Lutheran Europe there has risen up a
pervading spirit, not simply of disbelief but of utter
hatred of all faith. Let me quote the words of an
article from one of the ablest and most candid but,
both politically and religiously, one of the most liberal
of our public newspapers. ‘ Parties are always milder
in England than anywhere else ; but even here the
temper of those who deny is visibly rising higher and
higher, till the sceptic denounces, instead of quizzing
the believer, till there are whole groups who look upon
priests of all denominations as if they were dangerous
lunatics. On the Continent the spirit is far sterner.

... In Spain, Italy, and Southern France every move-
ment which paralyses authority brings hundreds of
Bilands to the surface, — men who want to kill priests
because they are priests, as Torquemada wanted to kill
heretics because they were heretics ; who do not simply
disbelieve, but who hate belief. In Austria the one
thing for which men will fight in the streets is to put
down the clergy ; in Belgium, priests are the first vic-
tims of every commotion ; and even among the more
temperate races of the North the conflict is become

Reunion of
Christen-
dom.

savage. . . . Men bind themselves by oath not to be
buried in consecrated ground. . . . Journalists refuse
even to discuss an assassination, because its object was
a clergyman, and really the life or death of a clergyman
cannot matter to human beings. ... It is not two
years since the Austrian Eeichrath rose to its feet
shouting that it believed only in the Gospel of Darwin.
Disbelief is invading entire populations like a creed;
as it advances, and gathers strength and fury from the
electricity which multitudes develop, it is become ag-
gressive, angry, inclined to use 44 short methods,” to-
wards which power in all ages has felt disposed.’ *

It appears that such open violence is more frequent
in Roman Catholic than in Protestant countries ; but
disbelief is far more universal among German Pro-
testants, where, according to the same journal from
which I have been quoting, there is often no more
sense of things spiritual 4 than in a hive of bees ; ’ and
the recent outrage in the Berlin Cathedral gives indi-
cation that its development is scarce likely to be less
cruel. Indeed, the American clergy witness that the
German emigrants are almost to a man unbelievers in
religion and red republicans in politics.

And what is to be our attitude ? There are very
many among ourselves deeply sensible of the evils
of isolation, of the sin and peril of division, who urge,
that now is the time, a season which may soon pass
away, for drawing nearer to our brethren, forgetting
old feuds, and seeking the unity of the Church of
Christ by an honourable capitulation with the Supreme
Pontiff at Rome. Let us look at the case fully, calmly,

* Spectator , August 21, 18G9.

and fairly. It is difficult to exaggerate the evils of
our wide disunion, ‘ our unhappy divisions,’ especially
at this season of trial and great danger. There can
be scarcely any work more needed or more blessed
than the work of reuniting the people of God, who are
now scattered like sheep upon the mountains, having
no shepherd. 4 Blessed indeed will be the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God.’ Deep as
may be the blessings of a reformed faith and of a
return to the principles of primitive Christians, no
candid thinker can doubt that even they were dearly
bought at the price of the division of Christendom into,
not two or three, but countless numbers of sects and
sectaries. Our own position indeed was different from TheAngii-
that of most foreign Protestants, and, of course, from mat ion.
the dissenting bodies among ourselves. There is no
need to deny or to palliate the errors of our own .
people — the violence of our rulers, the avarice of our
nobles, the time-serving of some among our clergy ; but
the Deformation here, at least was intended to be, and
in the main became, not a lawless throwing off of lawful
authority, not a wanton division from the body of the
Church of Christ, but rather a firm and reverent main-
tenance of the right of each national Church to minister
its own laws and discipline and to regulate its own
faith and worship, specially when other Churches re-
fused reformation and an external force strove to
suppress and smother the cry for it wherever it was
raised. We denied, and we deny still, that this was
schism. We did not separate from the Churches of
Prance or Spain, or Germany or Italy. To this very
day, and from the Reformation to this day, we have
ever accepted their orders, acknowledged their bap-

tism, and, however protesting against some of their
practices, have owned them as fellow Christians. I
do not think any English clergyman can refuse to
administer Holy Communion to a Boman Catholic lay-
man ; and every English Bishop accepts the orders
conferred by a Bishop in communion with Borne. We
claim, and ever have claimed, to be members of the
same Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with the
nations of the Continent, only we desire that our own
National Church should hold faster to the ‘ faith as it
was once for all delivered to the saints.’ We have
never even denied that the Bishop of Borne is a true
Bishop, that he is of Patriarchal dignity, that he has a
fair claim to precedence, as from most ancient times
having been acknowledged the first Bishop in Christen-
dom. What we do deny is, that there rests in him an
inalienable right to govern all other bishops and all
other Churches, and to rivet upon them doctrines and
practices against which their conscience, as well as
their reason, rebels. Let him treat us as we may
reasonably ask to be treated, and we will yield him all
the respect which is his due. Let him withdraw his
anathema, acknowledge our orders, our baptism, and
our Christianity ; let him recall the bishops he has
unlawfully placed among us ; let him show readiness to
remove the defects which ages have suffered to accu-
mulate ; and we will thankfully return to full and
fraternal unity with all the Churches in communion
with him. Eor tliis it is our duty to hope, for this to
pray, for this patiently and humbly to work, doing
nothing and saying nothing which shall needlessly
widen the breach, or make the return on either side
harder and more hopeless.

Bat the question rises now, Can we not do more
than this ? Can we not acknowledge our own errors,
as well as point to theirs ? Can we not profess our
sorrow for having left the unity of the Western Church,
ask forgiveness, seek favourable terms, and unite our-
selves once more by corporate union with the See of
Borne P

This is one of the thoughts which have risen in
thoughtful minds of late years, and it certainly gains
far larger acceptance than twenty years ago would
have seemed to be possible. Other thoughts and other
prospects have risen up before other minds. There are
those who tell us that the Church of the future must
be something utterly unlike all Churches of the past.
Some say it must be one with the congregational
bodies among our own Dissenters ; others, that it shall
be on the widest basis of philosophic Christianity, with,
perhaps, an elaborate ritual, general philanthropy,
and the smallest possible residuum of faith. I am in-
clined to think that neither of these latter forms will
find much favour with a body of men, who are at once
educated gentlemen and earnest Christians. But I am
fully sensible of the fervent longings of many devout
spirits for the re-union of Christendom, and their feeling
that isolation from the great body of believers, even
though that body have some superstitions, must be con-
trary to the spirit of the Gospel, and the will of Christ.

Let us then take a fair view of our position. It is
unquestioned by any, that whilst we in England may be
entertaining such thoughts as these, the councils of
Italy, though bent on union also, are bent on uniting
Christendom on principles more extreme, more, as we
call them, ultramontane than ever were propounded in

What is to
be the
Church of
the future?

Review of
our own
position.

Recourse
to primi-
tive testi
mony.

Witness of
the primi-
tive
Church
concerning
the cultus
of the
Virgin.

the palmiest days of the Papacy. The cultus of the
Virgin is insisted on more even than of old. In all
probability the coming Council will decree the dogma
of her bodily assumption into heaven ; will affirm the
personal infallibility of the Pope, and perhaps will pro-
claim the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, not
only as a dogma, but de fide.

If we are, and I believe we are, in such a point of
our history that we must look the future firmly in the
face, if it may soon be needful for us to make surer
our own footing, and see more clearly how we must
deal with surrounding forms, both of belief and of un-
belief, if perhaps that on which we may have rested
too securely, our acknowledgment by the nations, and
the verdict of the nation in our favour, should fail and
prove us false ; then surely our wise course must be
Stare super antiquas vias ; to 4 stand in the ways, and
see, and ask for the old paths where is the good way,
and walk therein.’ (Jer. vi. 15.)

If there be need ere loner to reconsider our own

position within, or our relation to other Christians
without ; if we may on any account be obliged to
remodel our own form of Church polity : how can we
act more wisely, or more according to the wisdom of
our forefathers, than by looking back to the earliest,
which wTere also the purest, ages of the faith and of the
Church P

For instance, let us take one great point of disputed
practice at least, if not of disputed faith, in which we
have hitherto stood farthest aloof from the Churches in
communion with Pome. I mean the cultus of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. It is unnecessary to enter into details.
I suppose it is questioned by no one that the Virgin is

now honoured and invoked in the Boman Church as
much as ever she was in the least enlightened ages ;
and that many devout Romanists, especially converts
from among ourselves, have urged that such honour
and invocation are rather in defect than in excess of
that which is to be desired.

Now, whether we take the Boman or the reformed
view of this subject, can we hesitate to say, that, if this
worship be right, it is a paramount duty ; if it be
wrong, it is a grievous error ? There seems no middle
course. If the Blessed Virgin Mary be all that devout
Boman Catholics hold, and her cultus be so great a bless-
ing and privilege to Christians as they believe ; then a
Church must be in a low state indeed, in which she is not
invoked, and in which but little is said of her honour.
On the other hand, if, as we think, the Blessed Virgin
Mary be but a highly sanctified and deeply blessed
human being, with the immeasurable privilege of having
been chosen to be the earthly instrument of the Incar-
nation of the Son of God ; then to make her the
Mediatrix between us and the One Great Mediator, to
invoke her constantly in our prayers, and to look for
her protection and patronage, must be one of the
greatest corruptions of which Divine worship is capable.

Now let us turn from this statement of the case
between Borne and England, to those early ages and
that early Church which we all profess to honour. Let
that be the umpire between us. What is its testimony P
First of all, then, it is four centuries after Christ, before
we meet with the faintest shadow of Mary-worship in any
way whatever ; and then, when we do meet with it for
the first time, it is in no extreme form, nay, in a very
simple form indeed ; and it is mentioned, not as a

Christian custom, but as a new and intolerable heresy.
The Father who records it says : — 4 If the Apostles will
not permit the angels to be worshipped, how much less
the daughter of Anna,’ i.e. St. Mary the Virgin.* Yet
now we are told that she is worshipped and adored by
angels and archangels, and obeyed even by her Divine
and ever blessed Son. But further than this, is not
the following undoubted fact P The Blessed Virgin is
not once mentioned in the New Testament, after the
first chapter of the Acts, the one only reference to her
in the Epistles being that our Lord is said to have been
4 made of a woman, made under the law ’ (Gal. iv. 4.)f
Again ; in the whole body of Ante-Mcene Fathers (i.e.
till the year 325 A.D., and indeed for some centuries
later still), there is a silence concerning her history
and her honour, almost as deep as that in the Apostoli-
cal Epistles themselves. This latter is the more re-
markable for this reason. The controversies of those
ages, which all concerned the divine and human natures
of our blessed Lord, continually lead to speaking of
His birth of a human mother, and to insisting greatly
on the immaculate virginity of that mother. Hence,
very constantly, the early Fathers speak of her as a
pure virgin, and one Ante-Mcene Father (Hippolyt.
Fragm. viii.) calls her ever- virgin, as well as holy and
immaculate Virgin. But in the whole of the Ante-
Mcene literature there is not the suggestion of a
prayer to her, of her power to hear a prayer, of the
efficacy of her intercession, or of the exaltation of her
nature above that of other women. More than once
she is spoken of as in sin or error. It is very observ-

* Epiphan. Hceres. 79.

f 1 Tim. ii. 15. Aia ri/c TeicvoyoriaQ is probably another allusion
to the birth of the Saviour.

able that Dr. Pusey, in his friendly controversy with
Dr. Newman, on the dogma of the Immaculate Con-
ception, though desiring to bring proofs from all
Christian ages against that dogma, actually deprecates
the language of the Fathers as too derogatory to her,
of whom he justly speaks with reverence as 4 the
Mother of Jesus, my Lord and God. I have not
spoken,’ he says, 4 as those Fathers speak for whom you
apologize, and whose language you explain. I could
not use it nor cite it, and I marvel that they used it.’*
We have only one liturgy remaining, which can be
of the same date with these very early Fathers, if even
it be as early as the latest of them, viz. the Clementine
Liturgy of the Apostolical Constitutions. This contains
no address to the Virgin, and no invocation of saints ;
and though some of the later liturgies may have traces
of such invocations, there is very good proof that these
were not in them from the first, but have been inter-
polated into them in after ages. There is one single
passage only in all the Ante-Nicene literature, extending
over 300 years, and embracing a great variety as well
as a large number of writings, on which it is possible
to ground an argument for looking on the Blessed
Viigin in the light of an advocate. The passage rightly
explained can have no such meaning ; but even if it
could, one sentence in 300 years would be a slender
foundation on which to build the superstructure
which makes St. Mary not only our advocate with
the Father, but our Co -Pie demp tres s with her Blessed
Son.f

* First Letter to Dr. Newman , p. 410.

f The passage is in Iren. V. xix. 1. For a full consideration of
it, see Appendix C.

Roman

supremacy.

In fact, it is impossible to doubt that the silence of
the Apostles and of the Early Church concerning the
Virgin Mary is the most emphatic testimony that she
was not worshipped even with the lowest kind of reli-
gious worship known to mediaeval devices. But then, if
this be so : either the Early Church neglected a para-
mount duty and was deprived of a singular blessing, or,
on the other hand, such worship is neither duty nor
blessing, but a human invention, and therefore danger-
ous and unlawful. This is the only possible alternative.

Plainly, then, having this witness, which cannot
be spoken against, however sorrowfully we may say
it, we yet may say, and we must say, We have for cen-
turies stood aloof from worship of the Mother of our
Blessed Lord, for we have been taught to worship only
God. If we are called back to a communion where such
worship is practised, we cannot accept the call ; we
cannot, for we dare not. We do not judge those who
have learned otherwise : their account will doubtless
be according to their light. But for us, with the wit-
ness of the first Fathers of the faith to which our own
near forefathers turned us, and with the witness of those
forefathers too still ringing in our ears, such a return
to ways which we had left, would be no less than
mortal sin. We long to unite with all our Christian
brethren in worship, in faith, in fighting for the faith,
in every holy thought and in every holy hope ; but we
dare not unite, when the terms of union involve what
we believe would be faithlessness to our dearest Lord,
and not honour but grief to her, whom we, with all
generations, gladly call Blessed.

I have taken the instance of Mary- worship, because
it is crucial, and the argument from it cannoUbe evaded.

There are other points, on which we might equally
ask the early Christians how they had learned Christ
and what they could tell us of His Church. Thus,
though the argument is not so direct as in the other case,
still, not the silence only but the voice of Ante-Nicene
Christianity is loud against the supremacy of the
Boman Patriarch. Independently of such direct pro-
tests as those of Polycarp, Irenseus, Tertullian, Cyprian,
Firmilian and others, familiar to all divines ; I think it
may fairly be said, that if twelve judges in Law or
equity, of unprejudiced minds, were called on to decide
from testimony of primitive Fathers and early history,
whether St. Peter was ever truly Bishop of Borne, their
unanimous judgment would be that there was no suffi-
cient evidence that he ever was so. Nay, further, I be-
lieve, they would declare, that all evidence went to
prove, that the Apostles (perhaps with the exception of
St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem), did not act as Dio-
cesan Bishops at all, that they held an office higher
still, presiding over the whole Church as Apostles
of Christ, and ordaining one man to the see of Antioch,
another to that of Alexandria, another to Corinth, and
again, another to Borne. Thus, on the testimony of
Irenasus, St. Peter and St. Paul jointly committed the
Bishopric of Borne to Linus,’ * or on that of the Aposto-
lical Constitutions, St. Paul made Linus Bishop, and
after the death of Linus St. Peter consecrated Clement, f
or as Eusebius says, the first three Boman Bishops were
Linus, Anacletus and Clemen t,$ or again, as Buffinus says,

* Iren. iii. 3. -f Constit. Apostol. vii. 46.

J Eusebius distinctly places Linus as the first, Clement as the
third Bishop of Rome, making the order, 1. Linus, 2. Anacletus,
3. Clement. H.E. iii. 4.

Reply from
develop-
ment and
authority
of the
living
Church.

Testimony
of Primi-
tive
Church
concerning
develop-
ment and
infallible
authority.

Liuus and Cletus were Bishops of Rome before Clement
during the lifetime of St. Peter-, they being the bishops,
but he holding the office of Apostle, and after the
deaths of Linus and Cletus, Clement received the like
commission again from St. Peter.* But if this one link
fails, the whole chain is broken. Uncritical ages may
have adopted the belief in the Roman Episcopate of
St. Peter, but the Catena fails, where only it can bind
either our faith or our understanding.^

There is an answer, we know, to all this, viz., that
in the early Church we can expect only the germs of
truth ; that the Church lias a living Guide ever vouch-
safed to it ; that under His guidance she is continually
developing new aspects, and even new dogmas of the
faith ; that that Guide is infallible, and that therefore
the Church so guided is infallible also ; and that the
cultus of the Blessed Virgin, and the supremacy of
the successor of St. Peter, are of those dogmas,
which the infallible Church has been thus permitted to
unfold.

I appeal once more to the past. The early Chris-
tians did indeed constantly claim the witness of the
Church, and without question, as we do, they valued
its authority ; but is it not undoubted, that their con-
stant appeal was to its witness, rather than to its
authority P Let us see this in brief review. Papias, the

* Ruffin, in Pref. Clem. Recog.

t The Church of Rome may reasonably claim to be an Apostolic
Church, when St. Paul pretty certainly, and most probably St. Peter,
were martyred at Rome, and perhaps jointly organised the Church
there. But the Bishops of Rome are no more successors of St. Peter
than other Bishops ordained by him. Indeed, the Fathers evidently
held all Bishops to be his successors, and all to have equally received
in him the keys from Christ.

first in order after the apostolical Fathers, is recorded
to have spent his time in striving to collect the testi-
monies of those who had themselves heard the teaching
of Apostles or of Apostolic men, because from them lie
expected to learn the truth as first communicated to
the Church.* St. Irenasus, especially in his arguments
against heretics, appeals not to Scripture only, but
also to the testimony which had been delivered to all
the churches by their apostolic founders, which had
been carefully treasured up by the successors of the
Apostles in those churches,! and taught by them to
everyone at his baptising Hence he recommends all
who are in any doubt, to go to those churches which
had most certainly a direct succession from the Apostles,
as Smyrna, Ephesus, and the churches of Asia,§ because
they could best testify to the doctrines and practices
taught from the beginning, and especially to go to the
Church of Borne, founded by St. Peter and St. Paul,
which preserved the faith announced to it by the
Apostles, and carried down to his own time by the succes-
sion of its Bishops ; || and the chief reason which he gives
for resorting to Borne is that, owing to the great
preeminence of its city, believers from all quarters
flocked to it, and so the tradition of the Apostles was
there most likely to be well preserved.^

* Euseb. iii. 39. f Iren. iii. 3, 1. f Iren. i. 9. 4.

§ Iren. iii. 3, 4. || Iren. iii. 3, 2.

\\ Ibid. ‘ Adhanc enim ecclesiam, propter potentiorem principali-
atem, necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui sunt
undique fideles, in qua semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata
est ea quae est ab apostolis traditio.’

I do not enter into the question here of the authority supposed to
be ascribed to the Church of Rome in this passage. (The reader
may be referred to Beaven’s Trenceiis, p. 63.) It is probable that

Tertullian, in like manner and for the same purpose,
continually appeals to tradition and to the authority of
the earlier ages (ages, we may remember, earlier even
than the end of the second century), on this principle,
that 1 * * 4 what is first is true, what is later is adulterate.’ *
He admits no authority to add, no authority to develop :
it is to the most ancient deposit and to that alone, that a
Father of the second century will permit appeal. One
more witness, not the worse in such a case for being
somewhat later ; Vincentius of Lerins, early in the fifth
century, gives us that famous rule of semper , ubique etab
omnibus , or 4 universality, antiquity, and consent,’ as the
test of orthodox and catholic truth, f Admitting Scrip-
ture to be 4 perfect in itself and abundantly sufficient for
all things,’ he yet appeals for better understanding of
Scripture to what has been held everywhere, by all men,
and from the first. He supposes a portion of the Church
to be corrupt, and says that we must then adhere to the
whole, not to the corrupt part. He supposes again,
even the whole Church to be in danger of corruption
from some new infection of heresy ; and then he says
we must go back 4 to antiquity , which can now no more
be seduced by any crafty novelty.'' Even among some

1 potentior principalitas ’ really relates to the city, not the Church of
Home ; but we need not doubt the early rank and importance of
the Church of Rome. The point of the quotation is that the appeal
is to antiquity, not to authority.

* ‘Id esse verum quodcunque primum, id esse adulterum quod-
cunque posterius.’ — Tertull. Adv. Prax. § ii.

‘ Id esse dominicum et verum, quod sit prius traditum : id autem
extraneum et falsum quod sit posterius immissum.’ — Tertull. De
Prescript, adv. Ilceret. §. xi.

f Common. 2.

ancient Fathers he imagines possible error, and then he
appeals, it may be, to an ancient General Council (si
qua sunt universaliter antiquitus universalis concilii
decreta).* That against which he constantly protests
is what he calls profane novelty. Nay, he seems
almost prophetically to have anticipated recent theories,
when he says 4 Perchance some will say, shall there
then be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ?’
And he answers, as every wise man must, that 4 the
religion of our souls should imitate the nature of our
bodies, which, though they develop their proportions,
yet remain ever the same that they were.’ f No one
will question that study of Divine truth should lead
the Church onward to increasing fulness both of light
and faith ; but Vincentius contends, that though there
may be such expansion, the faith must 4 continue full
and perfect in the proportions of each of its parts. . . .
admit no further change, sustain no loss of personal
identity, no variation of outline or definition.’ J

I might add, that the witness of the great Councils
was all in the same direction. Besides raising the
Holy Scriptures on a throne in the midst of them, as
an indication that they were the one supreme authority
to which all must bow, the Fathers of the early Councils
sought carefully for the testimony of still earlier ages
to the doctrines of the faith which they had to confirm.
At the first great Council of Nice, professions of faith,
which had been used in the Church from the beginning,
were brought forward, before the Council drew up its
own famous symbol. The utmost pains were taken to
find out the most ancient practices and forms of belief.

* Comment. 3.

f Comm. 23.

} Ibid.

Positive
teaching
of Early
Church.

Every one will recall the unanimous voice of the
assembled Fathers crying, 3,E6rj ap^aia, xpaTe/ra), ‘ Let
ancient customs prevail.’ Later Councils constantly
referred, with the utmost deference, to decisions of
Councils before them, especially to the Council of Nice,
as though the light was less certain, instead of brighter,
as it receded from the time when light first burst upon
the Church in the presence of Jesus Christ.

This, then, is the voice of the early ages of the Church,
and shall wre not listen to it? It is ignorant of Mary-
worship, ignorant of Papal supremacy, and it appeals,
whenever doubt arises, to an antiquity earlier than itself,
not to development, not to infallibility, of any (i.e.) but
those to whom once for all was delivered the faith and
the truth. It goes back always to Scripture, and next
to that to the witness of those who lived nearest to
the writers of Scripture, and w^ere therefore likeliest to
have learned from them the true teaching of Scripture.
And remember, that this was the Christianity which
won the world, and that too when at the summit of its
worldliness ; and that it is reasonably doubted, whether
from the fourth century to this day the Church has
gained more upon the world, than the world has won
back from the Church.

Let us not suppose, however, that the witness of the
earliest Church is negative only. Its silence concerning
the customs I have been speaking of is the more
impressive from the contrast of that silence with the
outspoken earnestness of its testimony to the deep
verities of Christian truth, and to the importance also
of Church order and authority. It is no exaggeration
to say, that from the Apostolic Fathers downwards, the
Ante-Niccne writings literally overflow with Christian,

Catholic, and Evangelical truth. The Trinity, the In-
carnation, the Atoning Sacrifice, the Verity of the
Godhead and of the Manhood of Christ, the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, His inspiring, regenerating, re-
newing power on the soul, our sinful birth in Adam,
our new birth in Christ, the resurrection, the eternal
judgment, the kingdom of the Messiah on earth, and
His everlasting kingdom in heaven ; these are the
themes on which every writer dwells, even in apologies
to heathen emperors, or arguments with unbelieving
Jews, where it might seem almost needless to speak so
much on such deep mysteries. It is equally true, that
from the very first the constitution of the Christian
Church, its order and authority, its high ordinances
and their blessing and efficacy are continually up-
held and enforced. We may form any theory we like
about it, but the facts are unquestionable, that from
the first we meet with Episcopacy and the utmost
importance attributed to it, with the sacraments ad-
ministered solemnly and devoutly, and esteemed to be
the channels of Divine grace and blessing, with the
unity, visibility, catholicity, authority of the Church
dwelt upon and enforced. Let us take a well-known
example. Ignatius most probably was born just at
the close, if not during the continuance of our Lord’s
earthly ministry.* He was pretty certainly made
Bishop of Antioch by an Apostle. In his unquestioned
writings, he names several persons as being bishops of
different sees : Polycarp Bishop of Smyrna, Onesimus
Bishop of Ephesus, Damas Bishop of Magnesia, Polybius

* There was an ancient tradition, though perhaps not much to be
regarded, that he was the very child that our Lord took up in His
arms and blessed.

Bishop of Tralles, and speaks, without naming him, of
the Bishop of Philadelphia.* He impresses upon the
Churches most earnestly the duty of obedience to their
bishops, and he names the three orders, bishop,
presbyters and deacons together ; so that there can
be no doubt that he does not confound bishops and
presbyters with one another. His words are, ‘Give
heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to
you. I am soul for soul (avrl-^u^ov iyto) with those
who are obedient to the bishop, to presbyters and to
deacons.’ f Whatever controversy there may be about
the genuineness of some recensions of the Ignatian
epistles, there is none whatever as to the genuineness
of this passage. It is in all the recensions in the Syriac

* E plies. 1. Magnes. 2. Trail 1. Philad. 1.

f Polyc. 6.

All the passages to which I have referred are in the Syriac, and
therefore undoubtedly genuine. The discovery of the Syriac VS. of
St. Ignatius, and its publication by Cureton in 1845, has raised, a
fresh doubt as to the genuineness of the seven shorter Greek
epistles. Some believe that the three Syriac epistles are the only
true and genuine letters of the venerable Bishop of Antioch.
Others see in the style of the Syriac epistles a clear proof that they
are rather abstracts or epitomes of the shorter Greek epistles. All,
however, agree that we may be very sure that what is both in the
Greek and in the Syriac is genuinely Ignatian. The most learned
of those who deny the genuineness of the shorter Greek, and rely on the
Syriac only, still admit that the epistles of this short ‘ Greek recen-
sion cannot date later than the middle of the second century ’ (i. e. 50
years from St. John,); ‘and if so, they still hold their place among
the most important of early Christian documents.’ (See Lightfoot
on Philippians , pp. 210, 232.) Now it is knoivn to all scholars
that the language of the Greek epistles concerning Episcopacy is
probably the very strongest in all Christian literature. Indeed it is
the strength of the language which has led to doubt as to the
genuineness of the writing.

as well as the Greek. Can anything explain this
mention of bishops, priests and deacons, and the
earnest insisting on the Church’s obedience to them,
and especially to the bishop as their head, by one
who was early in his life a convert to Christ, who was
a contemporary, probably of our Lord Himself, but
certainly of the Apostles, who must have known in-
timately more than one Apostle ; if Episcopacy did not
exist at all in the apostolic age, or even if it was not
believed in the Church of the Apostles to be of very
high importance and necessity P The silence of the early
Christians about some doctrines and practices, is em-
phatic testimony against them ; but their speaking con-
cerning others is irrefragable proof of their existence.*

* Though the more thoughtful among dissenters or presbyterians
will not allow themselves to use such an argument, yet the argument
is often put forward, that the Fathers were fallible men, did not
always agree, and that therefore it is useless to seek for their testi-
mony. The answer is very simple, — that all human testimony is
that of fallible men, and that if we do not take the testimony of the
primitive Christians, we can know nothing of Christianity. It is
only from their testimony that we know, in any degree whatever,
that the various books of the New Testament were written by
Apostles and companions of Apostles, and that therefore we have an
inspired and authoritative volume. But, if their evidence is trust-
worthy on this, it must be worth listening to on the customs, usages,
and opinions of their own days. There is a difference between
Anglicans and Romanists, as to whether Mary-worship be right or
wrong. We say that we can prove by evidence of a multitude of
writers (wise or unwise it matters not, but their evidence is irresist-
ible), that Mary-worship was unknown for four centuries, and that
when first attempted, it was denounced as heretical. There is a
difference between Anglicans and Congregationalists, as to whether
Episcopacy was the form of government under which the Church
emerged from the guidance of the Apostles of Christ. W e adduce
evidence from men who lived with the Apostles, who were honoured
and commissioned b}7- the Apostles, that Episcopacy did exist in

The

inference.

If, then, on the one hand, we dare not give up our
separation from worship, for which we have no au-

their days, and that it was then esteemed of the highest conse-
quence. If these Apostolic men were the weakest and most
ignorant of mankind, as they certainly were not, that would be no
argument that they could have dreamed, and told us their dreams,
concerning things which did not exist till centuries after them.
Their wisdom or want of wisdom is no element whatever in the
credibility of their evidence on matters of fact. All divines are
aware, that a still more important controversy was carried on with
great industry and ability during the last century, turning very
greatly on this same testimony. The Arians and Socinians main-
tained that the doctrine of the Trinity did not appear in the writings of
the earlier Christian Fathers, that hence it evidently was not scriptural
and apostolical, but that it was developed chiefly from the mixture of
philosophic speculation with Christian faith. The writings of Bull,
Waterland, Horsely and others, were directed to prove and did prove
indisputably, that the doctrine of the Trinity was the teaching of the
earliest Fathers, was from the first, and was therefore the truth.
Writers of cur own day, as the late Dr. Burton, George Stanley
Faber and others, carried on the same line of reasoning with like
success. If they had failed, the verdict of the educated world would
pretty certainly have been with Whiston, Clarke and Priestley,
against the foundation truth of our religion. There is, however, a
form of appeal which has lately been had much recourse to, viz., an
appeal to the authoritative voice of the undivided Church. It is
often said, that any doctrines and practices in existence before the
division of East and West, z.e., before the end of the tenth century,
must be accepted as bearing on them the impress of Catholic consent.
This is a very different principle. We profess to hold all truth (in
doctrine or practice) which can be traced clearly up through succes-
sive ages to the first dawn of Christian faith. This, and this only,
has the true marks of universality, antiquity , and consent — semper ,
ubique, et ab omnibus. It does not follow that we pledge ourselves to
everything believed or practised in the tenth century. If a practice
of the tenth century can be proved not to have been a practice of the
second or third, it is stamped with Vincentius’ brand of profane
novelty, even though it may have gradually crept into general
acceptance. We know full well, that image-worship had made its

I i

thority either in Scripture or among early believers,
or rather against which we have, first, the protest of
silence, and then the protest of condemnation ; neither
can we yield to those who would have us descend from
the high position which has always been our own, from
holding to apostolical constitution in Church, and to
evangelical Catholic doctrine in faith.

We cannot consent to look for a Church of the
future, which shall be congregational in its govern-
ment, or broad to the extent of rationalism in its
belief. We cannot look to such, for we are sure that
it will not be founded on the Rock, and that it will
never stand.

Must we then simply intrench ourselves in our isola-
tion, maintain an unbending woodenness, neither rise
above, nor turn aside from, the traditions of the. eigh-
teenth century ? Heaven forbid ! There may indeed
be bounds to the rising and ebbing of the Christian
faith, set by a perpetual decree, which the Church
must never pass ; but it cannot be, that that which
is meant for the home on earth of all true human
hearts, should be cold, unbending, and stiff.

It is in some respects our misfortune that we are
separate from our brethren ; so that on the one hand
we cannot at once go over to the continental Churches
and yield a hearty loyalty to them and to their rulers ;
that on the other we cannot give up that distinctive

appearance long before the schism of East and West; the iconoclastic
controversy witnessed to the doubts which its rise excited. To
determine whether the practice was truly Catholic or not, we have,
according to primitive principles, not only to consider whether it
ultimately prevailed in the Church, even in the undivided Church,
but whether it had prevailed semper , from the first, whether it were
ancient and true, or novel and adulterate.

Must we
remain in
our isola-
tion.

Church character, which separates us from our own Dis-
senters and from most foreign Protestants. But though
we are, it is true, separated from both ; yet we are mid-
way between both. By the Providence of God our
race and tongue have spread over the world, and our
Church has gone wherever our tongue is spoken. We
are placed, therefore, on a vantage-ground for bringing
together those, who should be brethren, but who now
can meet only as disputants, if not as deadly foes. We
claim to be Catholic in the highest and the truest sense,
united by a lineal and unbroken chain of our pastors,
of our discipline, of our faith, with the Church of the
purest ages, and so with the Church Catholic throughout
the world. We claim also to be built, not only on the
foundation of Apostles and Prophets, but above all on
Jesus Christ, the true Corner Stone, holding all Gospel
truth, as fully and as firmly as any of the bodies which
insist exclusively on the names of Protestant and Evan-
gelical. We cannot expect, perhaps, to win others over
to ourselves rapidly, if at all. But patient waiting and
earnest striving and Christian loving may in time do
much to smooth the rough places which part us from
them, and them from one another. If we can keep in
view the hope of embracing them, they may be led to
embrace us also at length as brethren. But if wTe are
to do this, we must be patient. Great works are never
done hastily. And what is a generation or a century,
in the wTork of the world and of the Church P Zeal-
ous men are never happy unless they can see of the
fruit of their labours instantly, and be satisfied ; un-
like the husbandman that waiteth patiently for the
former and the latter rain, sowing in the spring and
not thinking to reap till the autumn. But impatience

will inevitably retard that which is the great object of
hope. Yet, though we must vrait, we must work,
and we have a wide field to work in. We have much
work at home in our own ground, without going
abroad for work beyond us. If we are to clear the
vision of other eyes, we must cast the beam out of our
own eyes. We have a great harvest field of our own
poor to work in. The first look-out upon them is
sadly disheartening. They are not indeed alienated
from us to the extent that many suppose, in the way,
that is, of being joined to other communions. The
poor, as a body, whether in town or country (of course
with notable exceptions), are more disposed to be
Churchmen than Dissenters. The great fear is that
they will be neither. Indifference to every form of
faith, and to faith itself, is growing, rather has grown
over them. Thirty years ago, especially in large towns,
the working man would say, he was not very particu-
lar as to what religious teacher he followed, all were
very good, and there was only one way. Now he too
often says, at least his actions say, that he will follow
none, he sees but little good in any, he is puzzled be-
cause there are so many ways. So, if statistics tell
true, in our large cities not more than one in fifty of
the operative class enters either a Church or a Meet-
ing-house.# We must set to work to redress this evil.

* This is indeed a fearful tale ; but we must take into account
that some of those who do not go to church, try to spend part of
their Sundays in reading tlie Bible and singing hymns. Their
absence from church does not therefore always indicate actual rmbe-
lief. What it does indicate is a terrible indifference to, and disuse
of prayer, both private and social. This indifference has come over
the poor and the middle classes to a most deplorable extent, and of
course must lead, not very remotely, to utter irreligion. Every true

A Church which has lost its poor, and lost them to
indifference and sin, has indeed lost its truest riches.
We, in this Diocese, where there are no large cities,
may feel the evil less than others do. But the evil
grows, and we ourselves know something of it. And
all the Church must work against it. If we feel it less
here, there is the more reason why we should aid our
brethren who may feel it elsewhere. I spoke of infi-
delity just now in continental Europe. We have much
less of it in England, and, notwithstanding some growth
of philosophical scepticism, I doubt if our educated
classes, and those of highest intelligence amongst them,
were ever more generally attached to the faith and the
Church.* But among the less educated it is otherwise.

Christian knows that to ‘ pray without ceasing ’ is the secret of his
Christian life. How shall we, under God, rekindle this lost spirit
among our people ?

* Probably the Churches were never so full of educated, intelli-
gent and devout worshippers as we see them now wherever we go.
If we look to the leaders of thought and opinion, we shall generally
find them at least believers in Christianity, very often its zealous
defenders. To take, for instance, statesmen ; the Conservative
leaders are generally not only Christians, but Churchmen. Liberal
politicians in all ages are thought to incline towards a liberal view
of religion also. Yet we may well point to the Prime Minister,
the Lord Chancellor, the noble and eloquent author of ‘ the Peign of
Law,’ as utterly unlike the freethinking statesmen of the last century.
Whatever our agreement or disagreement with them politically, or
religiously may be, no cne can question their faith and their piety.
No doubt, among many of our men of science, there is a tendency to
materialism or to positivism. When have not such tendencies more
or less developed themselves ? In this Diocese at least, we may
thankfully point to that great university which from the days of
Bacon and Newton has been foremost throughout Europe in teaching
physical science, and may say that our scientific professors, with the
honoured name of Sedgwick still among them, are almost as con-
spicuous for defence of the faith as for investigation of the mysteries

The lower middle class, where education is compara-
tively at the lowest ebb of all, are rather inclined
to dissent than to unbelief. But among the operatives
in our large towns there is a seething hotbed ready to
generate, and rapidly generating such a growth of
scepticism, as may choke the seed of truth, almost as it
was once choked in revolutionary France, and as it is
now choking in Germany.

It is hard to say in few words, how the poor may be
won back to faith and godliness. But most assuredly
the Church is called on to throw itself with all its soul
into the conflict. Clergy, laity, men and women, all
that fear God and love man, have the call sent to them.
No lazy, perfunctory work will reach them. There is
need for throwing ourselves into their wants and homes,
living familiarly among them, giving ourselves wholly
to them. There is need, I believe, to make our
Churches more attractive, and thrown more fully open
to them, not repelling them by stiffness or exclusiveness.
They need short, earnest, hearty prayers, plain, telling
sermons, home to their hearts as well as to their heads.
It is rather unfortunate that they generally attend after-
noon or evening prayers. In the afternoon, fresh from
the heaviest meal of the week, they are never very
wakeful. In that and in the evening alike, there is a
service, which, however admirable in itself, scarcely
comes home to their wants. In the afternoon the
prayers are chiefly of intercession, the second Lesson

of nature. It may be a trifle to notice in such a context, but it is
not without significance, that the occupants of two of our most
illustrious chairs of physical science, the successors, and the eminent
successors of Newton and Wollaston, have joined us here during the
gatherings of this visitation, in the humble capacity of churchwardens
to their respective parishes.

chosen from the Epistles. The Litany is not said ; the
Gospels are not read then. I do not believe the
Church has so lost the gift of utterance, that it can no
longer give them all they need. We all of us want,
but the poor, among whom vice and sin are very bold
and outspoken, want most especially, strong, earnest,
fervent heart-utterances in their prayers. Then the
hymns and the music may be selected with anxious re-
ference to them. The Prayer Book needs no revision
for all this. It may be better adapted, and special
services may be added ; but change is one of those wild
natures, which, once let loose, may never be restrained.

Mission Chapels, Schoolrooms and Cottage Lectures
are specially fitted for services shorter and more awaken-
ing than may well suit the dignity of the special House
of God.

Intemperance, which seems the vice of a ruder age
than this, is still as rife as ever it was, probably rifer.
How to oppose, check, counteract it, is a difficult pro-
blem indeed. I have already asked the special atten-
tion of my Diocese to this subject in our rural deaneries.
I need not say that religion and intemperance cannot
thrive in the same soil.

The condition of the homes of the poor is another
difficulty to which also not long ago I asked the atten-
tion of the Diocese. If we could raise them, we should
do much to civilise and something to Christianise those
who live in them.

Disunion is a fertile source of alienation from us
among the poor. If there were not various forms of
faith presented to them, they would be less tempted to
refuse all. Wherever there is disunion, wherever there
has been separation, there must have been sin. But,
as we do not choose to take all the blame of our own

isolation from foreign Churches, so we must not throw
all the blame of our home divisions on Dissenters. It
is very plainly our duty to do everything we can, short
of conceding truth, to conciliate and unite with those,
who, whether from their self-will or our stubbornness
or worldliness, or any other faults on their side or on
ours, are not now walking with us. It will be neither
profitable nor wise to find fault. Let us try to open
our arms and our hearts as widely as we can to re-
ceive every brother who will return to a brother’s love.
It is true, that there has been little response wherever
invitation has been tried. Quarrels always run rapidly ;
but reconciliation creeps with a slow pace after them.
Here, too, we must wait and watch. And, though we
may do no more, we may at least clear ourselves of
fault, and show to all men, that there is no true ground
for disunion, but that the Church has, not in her truth
only, but in the work of those who minister her truth,
enough to satisfy the real spiritual necessities of all
who come to her, and in her company seek her Lord.
If we can do this, even though we do not bring back
those already separated from us, we shall keep strag-
glers from falling off to them, shall win many who are
half-hearted and hesitating, and shall pave the way
for future generations to unite in one heart and one
voice in one common worship and love.

I spoke of the beam in our own eye. I have never
faltered in my allegiance to the Church in which by
God’s mercy I have been born and baptized, never
doubted her rich blessings and her high destiny ; but
we can none of us doubt, that, whatever be her theory
and ground principles, there is, as in all things of human
administration, that which from time to time needs

F 2

restoration or development. Let us all set ourselves,
in our own sphere of duty, to work with the whole
body in raising, purifying, enlarging her. I say with
the whole body. Isolated efforts may do isolated good,
but they do not produce general good. If a Church
is to live, especially in these stormy times ; if we are to
retain our present position at all ; especially if our own
Church is to live, should it lose its political, for I trust it
will never lose its national, position ; then it must live by
hearty, united, corporate action.* And if it is to do this,

* There have appeared one or two very able essays of late on the
right of private action, the unlimited liberty of prophesying ; one in
the ‘ Edinburgh Review,’ and another by an eminent and excellent
retired English bishop on ‘ Free Discussion of Religious Topics,’ in
which it is argued that if we once adopt the principles of the Reform-
ation, we must allow even presbyters and bishops, without rebuke,
to teach whatever approves itself to their own conscience, be it
heresy or even infidelity. I know not how it strikes others; to me
it seems unquestionable, that this is an argument against the prin-
ciples of the Reformation, more telling than ever was brought
against it by the ablest of the Roman controversialists. If the
Reformation, instead of recalling us to Scriptural truth and primitive
order and practice, so entirely overturned the authority of the Church
of Christ, as that its voice is to be silenced by the wild utterances
of its most unfaithful pastors, then we may well accept the sentence
of its enemies, that it has been tried in the balance and found want-
ing. If the Church of the Reformation be impossible, the principles
of the Reformation must be a lie. It is a very easy thing to say, you
must choose either an infallible authority, whether vested in a body
or in an individual, from which there is no appeal, or you must
allow unlimited action and opinion to every one. Such antitheses
always sound forcible, but like most forcible and decided utterances,
they are transparently shallow. I have all my life laid it down as a
rule, that anyone who pronounces any question whatever to lie in a
nutshell, knows nothing about it. As to this particular question,
we may ask, Is it impossible, in religion or politics, or anything else,
to have a body held together by certain rules and principles, unless

we must determine to settle it more and more firmly,
first upon a sound basis, and then upon a wide one.

Let us once more appeal to the past. In the earliest
days, before any State influence had affected it, before
any Supreme Pontiff had set his seal upon it, how
do we find it ? In the first place, we find it full of
high, holy, deep truth. Simple, plain, strong belief in
Holy Scripture, and in the most mysterious doctrines
of Holy Scripture shine throughout its words and its
works. There are no faltering accents. God, Christ,
the God-man, the Holy Trinity, the Atonement, the
Judgment, the Life Eternal, the Sacraments, the Minis-
try, the Church, the death of sin, the life of the Spirit
(I have said already) they actually overflow, welling
up in full streams at every fountain head. We must
guard these, my Christian brethren, with the devotion
of our lives, and, if need be, of our deaths.

But, with all the soundness of truth, it seems plain

that body be infallible ? If every individual member of any cor-
porate whole is allowed to break every law and declaim against every
principle of that corporate whole, nothing can result but chaos and
disorder. If our Lord wills to have a Church upon earth, and not
merely a number of disintegrated units, it follows of necessity that
He should will that some authority should abide in that Church, and
that its separate members should not be permitted to rebel wantonly
against that authority ; it does not follow of necessity that He wills
either the body, or any particular ruler or rulers of that body, to be
infallible. It is observed by a very able writer of the extreme ra-
tionalist school, who allows nothing to supernatural influence, that
one of the greatest secrets of the early progress of Christianity was
the admirable organisation of the Primitive Church. (Lecky on
European Morals , vol. i. pp. 413, 438.) Firmly believing in the
Divine influence which guided and overruled all this, and trusting
to the same influence now, we shall succeed only by using all the
means, which Divine Wisdom ordained for our forefathers in the faith,
and still equally commends to us.

to me, that there was a breadth too, which we do well
to imitate. I hear there no names like High Church
and Low Church and Broad Church — or even Catholic
and Evangelical — as badges of party distinction. With
the exception of actual heretics, such as the Gnostics,
who denied Christ in the flesh, or the Ebionites, who
denied Christ in the spirit, we find all admitted to the
same shrines and the same altars, as brother Catholic
Christians. And very surely, if we are to work for
God, and to keep unity and peace, we must allow
sufficient latitude. That which is destined to embrace
the world and to save it, must fail of its errand, if it
would confine all to the narrow limits of a little sect.
God has willed us to be free and to give Him the
service of free hearts ; and it is more for His glory,
and more accordant with His purpose, that all should
think honestly out their own thoughts, than that each
should be set a fixed copy, from one letter or tittle of
which he must never swerve. Plainly, in those early
times there was a strong Evangelical element. I appeal
to writers like Clement of Borne* and Cyprian, and
after them Augustine. Without controversy there was
a strong Catholic element ; I need merely remind you
of Ignatius on Episcopacy, f of Justin, J Irena3us,§ Ter-
tullian, || and others on the Sacraments; of Cyprian
and many more upon the Church. ^ I may add, that
there was not wanting even an element of what we

* See especially Epist. 1, c. 32.

•f Ignat, ad Polyc. 6 (Syr.); ad Ephes. 3, 4, 5, 6 ; ad M agues.
2, G, 13 ; and Smyr. 8, 12. &c., &c.

J Apol. 1, pp. 93, 97.

§ Lib. 1, 18, iii., 19, &c.

|| See De Baptismo , passim.

% See, for instance, De Unitate Ecclesice passim.

may call free discussion or philosophical Christianity.
Most of the Apologists handled questions in a liberal
and large spirit. St. Clement of Alexandria mingled
philosophy with his faith in proportions that we should
now think, and with some justice too, open to question,
if not to censure. Origen, it is true, did not escape
censure ; but his enquiries were free to the borders of
licentiousness. And one thing, which deserves our
best attention, is, that the deep faith of those days did
not fear full search and enquiry. It is truly observable,
how much of the early patristic writings are either (1),
apologetic, i &, works on evidence ; or (2), philoso-
phical; or (3), on Biblical criticism. Indeed, at the
end of the second century, we have a Biblical critic,
whose labours lie at the foundation of all criticism
even in the present day.

The lesson which I draw from all this is not a lesson
of indifference, God forbid ; but of fair and charitable
tolerance. We cannot spare from our communion and
our brotherhood those whose view of things spiritual
is what is called Catholic, or those whose view is
Evangelical, or even those, who, if they stand more in
the outer courts of the sanctuary, are yet on that very
account the fitter to be sentinels to guard the outposts,
and keep off the first assaults of the enemy. We
want unity ; but we must not insist on too rigid an
uniformity, nor hold everyone to be faithless to his
colours and his cause, if the shape of his uniform or
the temper of his arms be somewhat different from
our own.

Charity is the great bond of unity. It is hopeless to
look for the unity, if we have rejected the charity. At
present we hold together with an uncertain grasp, by

virtue of that outer bond, which our State Establish-
ment ties around us all. If this shall be at any time
loosened, there are many who foretell that we shall at
once fall to pieces. Can we not begin to provide
against that whilst time is left us ? Can we not give
up charging each other on every provocation with
heresy, or popery, or infidelity? Can we not refuse
to array ourselves in hostile camps, as members of
Church Unions or Church Associations, rather than
members of the Chureh itself ; bent to unite for war,
instead of embracing for peace? Can we not pro-
test against our very Mission fields being turned into
battle-fields ; our Church Societies made the scenes
of conflict between those who profess to have come
together, that they may send out the Gospel of peace
and teach men to beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks ? Can we not
above all repudiate the bitterness of religious news-
papers, the one mission of which has been of late to
set brother against brother, heart against heart, and so
all against the cause of Him who came to unite all in
one body by His cross, and to bring them all in one
spirit to His Father. It has been said in America that
the Press is not ‘subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can be.’ We might have hoped otherwise of
the religious press : but alas I religious newspapers
seem to have confirmed the saying, more even than
secular, or even irreligious periodicals.

Without question there are differences amongst us
now on very serious questions. Yet we need not
wonder at this in an age of unparalleled mental activity,
and of earnest religious revival. It almost must be
so. And though there are important differences ; is it

not true, if we will but calmly think on it, that there is
yet below that surface which the blast of controversy is
ruffling, a deep, still ocean of united truth and faith ?
The elder men amongst us can easily remember when
the great division in the English Church at least was
said to be a division between those whose whole teach-
ing centred in Christ, and those who rather rested in
a cold correct morality. Take now the extremest
Kitualist and his most ardent Evangelical antagonist,
and ask whether that, on which the faith of both centres
and revolves, be not the atoning sacrifice of the cross
of Christ.

I am not insensible to the differences ; and I deeply
deplore the rash spirit in which some seem bent to put
forward their own views, convictions, and practices, in
the most offensive, instead of the least offensive form
possible. Still, is it not true that those very symbols
of their faith, on the one side and on the other, which
most offend, are symbols of that in which both agree,
viz., that Christ is the one ground of hope, and the
supreme object of love P And shall Christian men turn
from that one centre of their hope and love to look
on one another as their worst and deadliest enemies ?
Both loving the same Lord, both trusting in the same
crucified Bedeemer, both working for the salvation of
those for whom He died, can they be drawn close to
the Pole-star of their hope, whilst they are repelled
from one another by a hatred which seems fitted only for
a cause and for a leader the very remotest and most
opposite?

But then, if it is to be otherwise, all must exercise
self-denial. A Church (indeed a society of any kind),
involves of necessity some surrender of the individual

will. A Christian has a fair claim, and a Christian
teacher may have a bounden duty, to speak out that,
which by study, and prayer, and thought, he has learned
to think the truth. But neither teacher nor layman
has a right rudely and selfishly to offend the equally
deep, and perhaps equally intelligent feelings, no ! nor
even the unreasonable prejudices, of his brethren
around him. If a Church is to be so at the mercy of
every young thinker, or mimic of other thinkers, that
he may at his will, and against the will of all around
him, change all its customs, doctrines, and ordinances,
the Church ceases to be a Church and has become a
rabble.

I have tried to turn your thoughts to the earliest
ages of the Christian faith. You well know that the
professed principle of the English Reformation was a
recalling of faith and a readjusting of ceremonial to the
pattern, as far as possible, of the primitive Church.
All efforts of this kind are but partially successful at
first. They fall short in some things, they overleap in
others. It is vain to deny that we may have lost some
good ; it may be true that we have retained some that
was not good. From different stand-points men will
see all this differently. It is perfectly legitimate for
different members of the Church to try by argument,
by influence, by example, to restore what has been lost,
or to prune away what has become excessive. But
if they do it capriciously and arrogantly, they not
only imperil unity, but they infallibly produce speedy
reaction and pave the way for final disappointment.
The legitimate and the successful method is that of
action on the body, and so action through the body.
The eye must not say to the hand, I have no need

of thee, nor the hand to the feet, I have no need of
you. It is quite possible to act very boldly, without
at all acting arrogantly. I would counsel no fear in
raising and developing the Church, its principles and
its resources. Wherever it is in defect, let us in God’s
fear and grace strive to fill it : wherever it is in excess,
let us seek light and wisdom to reduce it. If there be
in any other communion, in the Continental Churches,
or the Eastern Churches, or in dissenting sects at home,
practices or principles which we may wisely borrow and
adapt, let us not be ashamed nor be afraid to take
them to ourselves. Only let us do all, not for self,
not for party, not in passion, but for God — for God,
and then it must be for man.

I will only add what the Apostle’s words, which I
have just cited, remind me of. The Church and the
Church’s future is as much a layman’s question as it is
a clergyman’s. Indeed the Church is for the pastor’s
work, but it is for the people’s souls. Let us strive to
draw, people and priest, together. If the Bishop and
the clergy be the head and the eyes, the people are the
hands, the feet, and the heart. He assured that, if
one member suffer all the members must suffer with it,
and if one member be honoured, all the members
should rejoice with it. (1 Cor. xiii. 26.) Let us in the
coming struggle against sin and evil, strive so to think
and to act. The clergy will do well to unite, organise,
and take counsel with the laity. The layman, if he
values not only his Church, but his own and his chil-
dren’s faith and hope, will do well to work with his
spiritual pastor for the preserving and strengthening of
both. We have a great unknown future before us.
It seems very cloudy as we look into it. But I think

I see even now bright gleams of glory behind the very
darkest shadow. Whether the clouds shall gather
thicker and darker, or the daylight shall burst through
and scatter them, rests, under God, with us. Union,
piety, patience, charity, will give us safety in the
thickest of the tempest ; and if we hold fast to them,
to our brethren, and to Christ, we shall ere long emerge
with safety into the unclouded light of heaven. It may
be, many think it is so, that this present conflict will
be very short, for that the time is at hand, when all
that now occupies our thoughts shall pass away ; only
all shall be accounted for. Many think that the pre-
dicted reign of Antichrist is at hand, if it be not
already begun ; and that then cometh the end. If it be
so ; still, what provides best for our souls and for Christ’s
Church here, will be the best provision for them both
at His coming and His glory. Let us make ready for
Him now in faith, in hope, and in charity ; and then,
when He cometh and knocketh, we shall be both ready
and willing to open to Him immediately. It is the
penitent, believing, loving Christian, it is the pure,
united, loving Christian Church, which can take up
the words of the beloved disciple, and say humbly but
heartily, ‘ Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus.’

APPENDIX A.

Statistics of the Diocese, chiefly derived from the
Eeturns made by the Clergy in 1889.

Population in 1861 ......

Area in acres .......

Benefices .......

Eesidence Houses ......

Parish Churches ......

Chapels of Ease, &c. .....

Curates licensed ......

Curates officiating without license
Parishes in which the Holy Communion is admin-
istered weekly or oftener
Twice a month or oftener ....

Monthly or oftener .....

Less than monthly, but oftener than six times
a year .......

Six times a year .....

Less than six times a year ....

Churches in which there are two full services on
Sundays .......

Churches with only one service on Sundays
Churches with daily service ....

Children attending Day schools : —

Boys 18,847

Girls 16,126 L .....
Infants 9,419 J

480,716

1,357,756

543

448

576

154

303

492

44,392

Children attending Sunday schools : —

Boys 20,653 i

Girls 18,558 L

41,288

Infants 2,077 J

Candidates for Confirmation confirmed by me
since last visitation

15,615

Deacons ordained in the same time .

107

Priests ordained ......

113

Churches consecrated by me since last

visitation ......

Burial grounds and additions to Burial
grounds ....

APPENDIX B.

On Patriarchates and the English Church.

There is great obscurity as to the rise of patriarchates in the
Church. De Marca* supposes that they were marked out
by the Apostles themselves, arguing from the fact that St.
Peter (1 Peter i.) addresses the Christians of Pontus, Galatia,
Cappadocia and Asia, enumerating these four provinces of
the Boman Empire, which also became provinces of the
Church, Nicomedia being the Metropolitical see of Bithynia,
Csesarea of Cappadocia, Amasea of Pontus, Ephesus .of Pro-
consular Asia. He supposes therefore that the Apostles
themselves mapped out the Church into divisions correspond-
ing with the greater and less divisions of the Empire, and
set over them Metropolitans and Patriarchs respectively.
He admits indeed that, though this form of division into
provinces began with the Apostles, it received great increase
from the subsequent arrangements of the Bishops set over
the greater sees; and confesses that in the Council of Nice
(a.d. 325), when the three great sees of Borne, Alexandria,
and Antioch are named, their bishops were reckoned simply
* De Concordia Saccrdotii et Imperii, lib. 1, c. iii. § 2.

as taking precedence of other bishops or at most as Metro-
politans, and that it was not till later Councils that they are
spoken of as Archbishops, Exarchs and Metropolitans.* So
Thomassinus truly says, that first the name of Metropolitan
was added to that of Bishop, a simple and modest title,
merely meaning the Bishop who presided over that city, which
according to imperial ordinance was the Metropolis and
head of a Province, f It is, moreover, evident from the
words of St. Jerome that in his day (a.d. 390) there had
arisen no marked distinctions in the episcopate, certainly not
the defined grades of Patriarch, Metropolitan, Bishop. The
distinction of such grades he attributes to the Montanists
as a part of their heresy. c Amongst us,’ he writes, ‘ the
Bishops hold the place of the Apostles, but with them (the
Montanists) the Bishop is third, for they have the first Patri-
archs, the second those whom they call cenones , and so the
Bishops fall into the third and almost last place, as though
thereby religion should become more ambitious, if what is
first amongst us should be last among them.’ {

The rise of imparity among bishops may be first discerned
in the words of the Apostolical Canons, a collection of very
uncertain date, probably about the end of the third century,
the thirty-fourth of which enjoins that ( the Bishops of
every nation should acknowledge him who is first among
them ; should esteem him as head and should do nothing of
great moment without his advice .... and that on the
other hand he should do nothing without the advice of
all the Bishops.’ § The Council of Eliberis (a.d. 305) speaks
also of c a Bishop of the First See,’ Primce Cathedrce Episco -
pus (Can. 58) ; and earlier still (about 250 a.d.) there appears
to have been a kind of primacy, in the Bishop of Carthage
over the other African Bishops. ||

* lb. § 5. f Vetus et nova Ecclesice disciplina, p. 1, 1. i. c. 3, § 1.

Z Ad Marcellum, Ep. 54.

§ The Council of Antioch (a.T). 341, can. ix.), refers to this Canon of the
Apostles, and interprets it of Metropolitans.

|| St. Cyprian writes, as if he had some authority among his brother bishops
in Africa : — ‘ Per pruvinciam nostratn hsec eadem collegis singulis in notitiam

The first real mention of a Metropolitan, however, is in the
Vlth Canon of the Council of Nice (a.d. 325) where it is said,
‘ Let the ancient customs pervail which exist in Egypt, Libya
and Pentapolis, that the Bishop of Alexandria should have
authority over these, as also this is the custom with the
Bishop of Rome. In like manner also in Antioch, and in
the other Provinces.’ The Arabic versions of this Canon
all add that the Bishop of Rome had authority over the
Provinces adjacent to him. The ancient Latin version in
Justelli Bibliotheca has 6 The ancient custom is that the
Bishop of Rome should govern by his care the suburbicarian
places and all his Province.’ — Antiqui moris est , ut TJrbis
Romce Episcopus habeat principatum, ut suburbicaria loca
et omnem provincial sua sollicitudine gubernet . And
the Version or Paraphrase of Ruffin us (Presbyter of Aquileia
in the fourth century), is that the Bishop of Rome ‘ should
take the charge of the suburbicarian Churches ’ — suburbi-
cariarum ecclesiarum sollicitudinem gerat *

Later in the same Canon it is forbidden that anyone
should be made a Bishop without consent of his Metropolitan.
Canonists are not agreed whether this famous Canon confirmed
to the Bishops of the great Sees patriarchal jurisdiction, or
only the lower jurisdiction of Metropolitans. Many, as
Launoy, Basnage, Beveridge, &c., think that patriarchical
power was yet unknown, and that the authority established
was only that of Metropolitans, arguing partly from the
occurrence of the words Province and Metropolitan in the
Canon, and from the absence of the words Patriarch or
Exarch and Diocese , partly from other indications of the
later rise of patriarchs and patriarchates. Others, as
Baronius, De Marca, Valesius, Du Pin, &c., hold either
that patriarchal authority had existed before the Council of

perferentes, ab his quoque fratres nostros cum litcris dirigendos esse mandavi-
mus.’— Ep. 42, ad Cornclium. Fell, Ep. 45, p. 87.) See also Epp. 40, 45. (Fell,
43, 48.)

* The various sections of this famous canon aro given at length by Bishop
Beveridge, Synodicon, tom. ii., Adnotationes, pp. 50, 51.

Nice, and was confirmed by this Canon, or else that it was
first instituted by the Canon itself ; arguing that the titles
Metropolitan and Province may have been still used because
the titles Patriarch and Diocese had not yet been devised ;
but that evidently the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alex-
andria (viz. Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis) was the juris-
diction of a Patriarch, not the jurisdiction of a Metropolitan
only, that it included in fact six Provinces, and constituted
the whole of the great Egyptian Diocese.* * * §

Whichever of these two opinions be the true, the following
points are as certain as anything well can be; viz. 1st, that
the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alexandria and that of the
Bishop of Rome, are put on the same footing, both as being
derived from ancient custom, and as being similar in kind.
2ndly, that the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome extended
only to the Suburbicarian Churches, a jurisdiction coexten-
sive with that of the Vicarius Urbis, including Campania,
Tuscia, Umbria, Picenum Suburbicarium, Sicilia, Apulia,
Calabria, Brutii, Lucania, Samnum, Corsica, Valeria, but
not extending to Gfaul, Spain, or Britain.')'

We come next to the second General Council, (Constanti-
nople, a.d. 381), where in the second Canon we meet with
the name of Diocese , and find an injunction that Bishops
should not go out of the limits of their respective Dioceses ;
that the Bishop of Alexandria should administer the Egyp-
tian Diocese, the Bishops of the East, the Eastern Diocese,
reserving the rights granted by the Council of Nice to the
Bishop of Antioch, &c. On this Theodoret observes, 6 They
divided the different Dioceses, assigning to each its proper
limits and jurisdiction.’ { And Socrates says that 4 they
constituted Patriarchs and so distributed provinces, that no
bishop should interfere with the affairs of another Diocese.’§

* De Marca, Be Concordia , lib. 1, c. iii. ; Du Pin, Be Ant. Eccles. Bisciplina,
diss. 1, c. xiv. Bingham, Antiq, pt. ii. c. xvii. § 8.

f See this proved at length by Du Pin, as above.

J Theod. Ep. 86, ad Plav.

§ Socrates, H. E. lib. v. c. 8.

In the next General Council (Ephesus, a.d. 431) the Bishop
of Antioch claimed a right to ordain in the Province of
Cyprus, but this was refused on the ground that Cyprus was
exempt from external jurisdiction, and it was forbidden that
any bishop should take possession of a province not anciently
belonging to his jurisdiction.*

Lastly, we come to the fourth General Council (Chalcedon,
a.d. 451), where in the IXth and XVIIth Canons the Clergy
are forbidden to leave their own bishops and go to secular
tribunals, when they have a cause with a brother cleric. If a
clergyman has a difference with his own or another bishop, he
is to have recourse to the Synod of the Province; but if a
bishop or clergyman has a controversy with the Metropolitan
of the Province, he is to go before the Exarch of the Diocese
or to the throne of Constantinople.

Lastly, the XXVIIIth Canon of the same Council as-
signs to the Bishop of Constantinople, or New Rome, the
second place among the Bishops of Christendom and the
same privileges with the Bishop of Rome, following, as its
authors say, the example of the Council of Nice, which gave
priority to the Bishop of Rome, because Rome was the im-
perial city ; reason, therefore, it was, that when Constanti-
nople became the capital of the Eastern Empire, its Bishop
should have equal power with the Bishop of old Rome.f
This is a brief history of the rise of patriarchates. It is
plain, that the divisions of the Empire were followed in the
divisions of the Church. Episcopal Sees were naturally
placed in important cities. The great cities, which were the
heads of provinces (sTrapxccu) were of course the places of
greatest intelligence and of greatest concourse ; and so their
Churches and their Bishops were resorted to by the clergy
and the laity of the more rural districts. Rome (to which, as
Irenaeus says, people must needs come ob potiorem princi-
palitatemi), Alexandria, and Antioch being the three chief cities

* Concil. Ephes. 1, act. 7. Decret. de Episc. Cypr.

f Concil. Chalced. can. xxviii.; Beveridge, Synodicon, tom. i. p. 145.

\ Iren. in. iii. 2.

in the West and East, they and their Bishops naturally took
the lead, till Constantinople rose into its great pre-eminence,
and then its Bishop was placed on a level with the Bishop of
Rome.

The tradition-, that Apostles had resided at some of these
cities, gave additional lustre to them ; and the Roman
divines tell us that Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were pre-
eminent, because they all were founded by St. Peter. Yet
Alexandria, which was put next to Rome till the rise of Con-
stantinople, certainly was founded by St. Mark and not by
St. Peter; Constantinople, which by the Council of Chalcedon
was put second, was founded by no Apostle ; and the only
Church which pretty certainly did owe its foundation to St.
Peter, viz., Antioch, was in the first instance placed third,
and ultimately only fourth.

Whenever patriarchates really came into existence ; if
even, as De Marca argues, provinces and patriarchates were
mapped out by the Apostles ; still, as he also admits, they
were made conterminous with the civil divisions of the Em-
pire. If they arose between the times of the Apostles and
the Synod of Nice, if they were defined by that Synod or by
the Synod of Constantinople or of Chalcedon ; still the same is
true ; and as their limits corresponded with the civil bound-
aries, so they were called by the names of the civil divisions.
The jurisdiction of a Metropolitan extended over an hrap^a,
or Roman Province ; the jurisdiction of a Patriarch extended
over a SioUrjo-i? or Roman Diocese ; the Council of Chalcedon
and others called its ruler an Exarch , which was the Roman
title for the civil Governor of a Diocese or Exarchy. The
title Patriarch itself does not occur till the time of Socrates,*
a.d. 440, just before the Council of Chalcedon, and it is pro-
bable that Patriarchs were first called Exarchs, as their rule
extended over a Roman Exarchy or Diocese, and the name
of Patriarch was not added till a later date.f

The Dioceses or Exarchies of the Empire were fourteen in

* Soc. H. E. lit. v. c. 8, as quoted above.

t Very probably the title Patriarch was of Jewish origin (see De Marca as

g 2

100

number; seven in the East, 1. Egypt ; 2. the East, ( oriens );'
3. Asia, (Proconsular Asia); 4. Pontus; 5. Thrace; 6.
Macedonia; 7. Dacia. Seven in the West: 1. The Subur-
bicarian Provinces subject to the Vicarius JJrbis ; 2. The
Italian Diocese; 3. Africa; 4. Illyricum ; 5. Gaul; 6. Spain;
7. Britain.*

It is shown by Beveridge, De Marca, Crakanthorp and
Bingham, f that these civil divisions were followed in the
mapping out of the Dioceses or Patriarchates of the Church,
though in the East the division was more carefully followed
than in the West. In some cases, there were autocephalous
Churches, or Provinces not contained within any Diocese, and
so not subject to a Patriarch. The Patriarchs claimed the
right of confirming and consecrating the Metropolitans within
their Dioceses or Patriarchates ; but in the autocephalous
Provinces such as Cyprus, the Metropolitans were ordained
by the Bishops of the province.

We have seen above that the original jurisdiction of the
Roman Patriarch did not extend to Gaul, Spain, or Britain ;
Britain was one of the Roman Dioceses or Exarchies, and so
would naturally have been formed into an Ecclesiastical
Diocese or Patriarchate. There are some who hold that it
was truly a Patriarchate, whilst others think that, like
Cyprus, it was only an autocephalous Church, subject to its
own Metropolitan. Certain it is, that for six centuries it
owned no external jurisdiction. It has been shown, that
Britain was independent of Roman jurisdiction at the
Council of Nice ; J it is very certain, that at the end of the
sixth century the British Bishops knew nothing of the
authority of the Roman Patriarch, acknowledging subjection

above, Bingham n. xvii. 4) though Thomassinus stoutly denies this, pt. 1 , lib. 1,
c. iii. § 14.

* See Crakanthorp, Dcfcnsio Ecclesia Anglican cs, cap. xxii. p. 135 (Anglo-
Catholic Library).

f Beveridge, Synodicon , tom. ii. adnot. p. 115. De Marca, Be Ant. Eccl. Disc.
diss. 1, c. 13; Crakanthorp ubi supra; Bingham, bk. ix. c. 1.

+ Barnes’ Catholico-Bomanus Pact 'ficus, § iii.; Stillingfleet, Origincs Brit. c. 1.

101

only to the Bishop of Caerleon on Usk, their Primate,* and
that the Roman Patriarch did not ordain the Metropolitans
of England till the tenth century.f

Whether Britain was only autocephalous or originally a
Patriarchate, there can be no doubt that its Archbishops
always held an unusually high position among Christian
Prelates. Chief- Justice Holt, in delivering his famous judg-
ment (in Lucy v, Watson), asserted that the Archbishops
in England had anciently 4 the same jurisdiction of supremacy
as the Patriarchs of Constantinople.’ J The Archbishop ot
Canterbury was called by the Pope himself Alterius orbis
Papa. He had jurisdiction over Ireland as well as England,
and in the time of the first two Norman Kings, Canterbury
was declared to be the metropolitan Church of England,
Scotland, Ireland and of the Isles, and its Archbishop was
sometimes called a Patriarch, and orbis Britannici Pont if ex.
At General Councils abroad he had precedence of all other
archbishops. §

Whilst I am writing this note, I have seen the important
letter just addressed by the Patriarch of Constantinople to
the present Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he styles
him 4 Exarch of the Anglican Confession.’ Indeed, the rea-
son assigned by the Council of Chalcedon (Can. XXVIII.),
for giving the second place among Bishops to the Bishop of
Constantinople, would in the present condition of Christendom
be very applicable to the first Bishop of the Anglican Com-
munion. The English Empire is as extensive now, as the

* Spelman, Concil., tom. i. p. 108. ‘ Councils &<*.,’ after Wilkins by Had-

don and Stubbs, vol. i. p. 122.

f This is shown by De Marca, 1. vi. c. iv., § 6-9, and by Thomassinus, p. ii.
1. ii. c. xix. § 10-14, concerning Gaul, Spain, England, and Africa. It is
proved at length concerning the British Church, by Stillingfleet, Origines Bri-
tannicce , c. 3, 5. See also Palmer, Episcopacy Vindicated, § ix., and Bingham,
Ant., bk. ix. c. i. §§ 11, 12.

t See Eccles. Judgments, Brodrich and Fremantle, p. 344. Crakanthorp
quotes William of Malmesbury (in Proleg. ad lib. de ■Brest. Angl. Pont.) and
other authorities for the statement that the Bicecesis of Britain was anciently
subjected to the Archbishop of Canterbury as Patriarch. Defcnsio, c. xxii. § 64.

§ See Burn, Eccles. Lcao, ed. Phillimore, vol. i. p. 196.

102

Roman Empire was of old, and the Patriarch of Constant^
nople took precedence, only by virtue of the civil and im-
perial dignity of the city in which his throne was placed.
London is far more important than Constantinople now, and
not inferior in importance to Constantinople in the fifth cen-
tury. The Archbishop of Canterbury is virtually Archbishop
of London, as London would have been the seat of the pri-
macy, but for the desire to honour the memory of Gregory
the Great, King Ethelbert, and St. Augustine.

APPENDIX C,

On Iren. v. xix;. 1, and on the Immaculate Conception.

In all genuine Antenicene literature there is, as far as I can
discover, but one passage telling in the smallest degree in
favour of the Roman Catholic teaching and practice concern-
ing the Blessed Virgin, (viz. Iren. v. xix. 1). I have stated
in the text, that every other Father is most observable for his
silence concerning her. In one doubtful work of Hippolytus
‘ On the end of the World and Antichrist,’ ch. i., she is called
©eoTo'/cos', a title which we all willingly give her, as it ex-
presses a great Scripture and Catholic truth ; she is called
again ‘holy and immaculate Virgin,’ (c. 18.); and again ‘all-
holy Virgin,’ 7 rapOevos irava^ia (c. 22). The last epithet
‘ all-holv,’ is to our ears a strong one ; but its strength will be
a good deal lessened if we remember that the Greeks call a
Patriarch or Chief Bishop 'iravizpozTcnos, 6 all-holiest,’ cer-
tainly not believing him free from sin, original or actual.
All these phrases evidently refer to the undefiled purity of the
Virgin Mother of our Lord, as regards His conception by the
Holy Ghost, not to her freedom from human infirmity or
original sin.

The passage of Irenseus, as we have it in the barbarous
Latin translation (the original is lost), is as follows : —
‘ Et sicut ilia (sc. Eva) seducta est ut effugeret Deum, ita hscc

103

(sc. Maria) suasa est obedire Deo, uti virginis Evse virgo
Maria fieret advocata, et quemadmodum astrictum est morti
genus humanum per virginem, solvatur per virginem, sequa
lance disposita, virginalis inobedientia per virginalem obedi-
entiam.’ ‘As Eve was seduced to forsake God, so Mary was
persuaded to be obedient to God, that the Virgin Mary
might become the comforter of the virgin Eve, and as the
human race has been bound to death by a virgin, so the dis-
obedience of a virgin may be loosed, the balance being fairly
struck, by the obedience of a virgin.’

The history of the passage is, First, that it is simply an
amplification of a passage in Justin Martyr (Dial. 100).
6 Eve, who was a virgin, having conceived the word from the
serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But Mary
the Virgin, having received faith and joy, the angel Gabriel,
preaching to her good tidings (svayysXi&fjLsvov), answered,
Be it unto me according to Thy word. And so by her He
was born ... by whom God destroys the serpent (or looses
the power of the serpent) and effects deliverance from death.’
Secondly : Irenseus had himself used the same antithesis
once before, in a slightly different form, and that passage is
greatly calculated to throw light on the passage before us.
His words are : — 6 Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying,
Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according
to Thy word, but Eve, disobedient, for she did not obey,
whilst she was as yet a virgin. As Eve, having a husband,
Adam, but being yet a virgin ... by disobedience became
the cause of death to herself and to the whole human race ;
so also Mary, having an affianced husband, and yet being a
virgin, by obedience became the cause of salvation to her-
self and to the whole human race. . . . But so the knot of
Eve’s disobedience received solution [or was untied], by
the obedience of Mary, for what Eve bound by unbelief,
Mary loosed by faith.’ — Iren. ill. xxii. 4.

Thirdly, the same thought occurs in Cyril of Jerusalem
(Cat. xii. c. 15) who says that 4 by a virgin came death, so it
was fitting that of a virgin should life appear ; ’ in Jerome

104

( Ejp. 22, tom. i. p. 122, Ben.), who uses nearly the same words
as St. Cyril ; and in St. Augustine, who quotes the very words
of Irenaeus, (c. Julian, i. 4).

To return from the history to the interpretation of the
passage (Iren. v. xix. 1) : there are two doubtful words. The
■first is advocata. Of what Greek word is this the transla-
tion ? and how ought it to be translated into English?
Grabe has shown that pretty certainly the Greek was
7rapd/c\riT09, which is generally admitted to be true, even
by Roman Catholic divines. He has also shown that
according to the ecclesiastical Latin of the day advocare ,
advocatio, advocatus, had all the sense of 6 comforting,’
4 comfort,’ 4 comforter.’ Thus, in Tertullian cont. Marcion.
iv. 14, the words of Isaiah lxi. 3, 4 to comfort those that
mourn,’ are rendered 4 advocare Janguentes ; ’ and again,
St. Luke vi. 24, oti cnrs^sre rrrapaK.\r)(nv v/jlwv, 4 for ye have
received your consolation ’ is rendered 4 Quoniam recepistis
advocationem vestram.’ Whence it is evident, as Grabe
remarks, that 4 the Blessed Virgin is called the consoler of
Eve, and of the whole human race, because, she being
obedient to God, gave birth to the second Adam, the Saviour
of the world, just as Eve, giving ear to the devil, seduced the
first Adam, and so became the cause of death to their pos-
terity ’ (ad. Iren. v. xix.). The other word, on which
there has been some debate, is solvatur, 4 may be loosed.’
The comparison of the two passages of Irenaeus, in which this
favourite antithesis of Eve and Mary occurs, would of itself
prove that solvatur is the right reading. In hi. xxii. 4, we
read 4 the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by the
obedience of Mary : ’ — 4 Evae inobedientiae nodus solutionem
accepit per obedientiam Mariae ; quod enim alligavit virgo
Eva per incredulitatem, hoc virgo Maria solvit per fidem.’
And here, in v. xix. 1, we learn that 4 as mankind was bound
by Eve, so the disobedience of Eve is loosed by the obedience
of Mary.’ It happens, however, that Grabe has admitted the
reading salvatur, 4 is saved,’ following only three MSS. all
traceable originally to one, against the voices of all the other

105

MSS. of Irenseus, against the natural sense of the passage,
and against the authority of St. Augustine, who quotes
solvatar , according to all MSS. except two.

However, there being this ambiguity in the sense of the
word advocata , and in the reading solvatur , the Roman
Catholic divines have naturally taken the benefit of the doubt,
and rendered, 6 the Virgin Mary was made the advocate of
the Virgin Eve, and as the whole human race was bound to
death by a virgin, so by a virgin it is saved.’

With the evidence of MSS., of quotations, of parallel pas-
sages, and of internal probability, it is very clear that solvatur
is the right reading, and it is equally clear that advocata
signifies 6 consoler.’

Yet, even if we were to admit the opposite conclusions,
we should have simply this phenomenon, that one Father of
the second century repeats the words of an earlier Father
(Justin M.), and amplifies them ; that in this amplified repe-
tition he suggests, that, as Eve brought in sin by disobedience,
and thereby ruined mankind, so Mary by obedience gave
birth to the Saviour, whereby mankind were saved, and that
so we may look on Mary as the advocate of Eve.* Hive the
passage, so read and so translated, its utmost force, and it
can say no more : and it stands alone for at least five cen-
turies. Most of those, who refer to it, refer to it without its
special point. Of course, when the excessive veneration of
the Blessed Virgin gained ground, the passage would be
valued and made the most of, and from it more and more
would be built up. But it is very observable that the great
writers of the fourth and fifth centuries, who quote or refer

* A learned friend of mine has supplied me with the following remarkable
and evidently undesigned parallel to the language of Irenseus in the language
of an eminent American Presbyterian divine. He says : —

1 Pull well I know that by Woman came the apostasy of Adam, and by woman
the recovery through Jesus:’ — Appeal to Woman, by the late Eliphalet Nott,
D.D. President of the (Presbyterian) Union College in America.

No one can doubt that Dr. Nott did not mean that the Virgin Mary was our
Mediatrix, and yet he must have known, what Irenseus could not foresee, the
prevalence of Mary-worship.

106

to it, do not amplify it but rather pare it down. We may
safely say that a single unsupported passage, even if it were
in Holy Scripture, ought not to be pressed against the general
silence, still less against the general opposition, of the rest of
Scripture, as it is easy to misinterpret a single passage, but
not a consentient record.

On the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception the evidence
is as clear as on the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I have certainly no wish to refer to any words, which may
seem disrespectful to the Mother of our Blessed Lord, whom
He honoured and loved. Yet the question is of weightiest
moment : and it ought not to be forgotten, that the earlier
Fathers not only give no hint of her worship being tolerated
in the Church, and not only give no hint of a belief in the
Immaculate Conception, but several of them attribute to her
the ordinary infirmities of the nature of sinful man. See
Tertull. c. Marc . iv. 19 ; Origen, c . Celsum , § viii. c. 26 ;
Homil. in Luc. xvii. ; Athanas. c. Avian, orat. iv. tom. i.
p. 493, Colon, (on which see Bishop Kaye, Council of Niccea ,
p. 249, n. 5); Chrysost. in Matt. Horn. 45, tom. vii. p. 467.
Epiphanius says expressly, that ‘ she was not born in any way
differently from other men ’ ( Hcer . 79). St. Hilary says that
f she is to come into the severity of the judgment’ (in Ps.
119, p. 262, Ben.).

It happens, moreover, that some of the Fathers have
spoken of certain human beings as though they had been
saved from the common lot of humanity by special saintifica-
tion : but singularly enough they do not speak of the Blessed
Virgin so. Thus St. Athanasius ( c . Avian, iv. : tom. i.
p. 485, Colon.) referring to Rom. v. 14, speaks of many as not
having sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression ;
and instances Jeremiah and St. John the Baptist as sanctified
from their mother’s womb, (no proof by the way, that they
were sinless, unless all sanctified persons are free from all sin
and human infirmity). On this passage Mr. (now Dr.)
Newman says, 6 It is remarkable that no ancient writer
(unless indeed we except St. Austin) refers to the instance of

107

St. Mary, perhaps from the circumstance of its not being
mentioned in Scripture.’ But what a testimony is this !
Scripture never mentions the sinlessness of St. Mary; no
ancient author (unless, indeed, we except St. Austin), refers to
such sinlessness. Was there ever such a consentient testimony
against a doctrine ?

But St. Austin is perhaps excepted. What is this excep-
tion ? It is a well-known and famous one, and, no doubt,
was the first bud of the now full-blown dogma. Augustine
wrote in the fifth century, and very many of his writings are
directed against the heresy of Pelagius. Pelagius specially
desired to disprove the doctrine of original sin. For that
purpose, Pelagius argued that the Virgin Mary must have been
sinless in order to fit her to conceive the Saviour, and that, if
she was so, then others might be. St. Augustine’s answer is in
these words : 4 Concerning the Virgin Mary, I am not willing,
for the honour of our Lord, to hold any dispute, when we
are talking about sin. For, how do we know what more
grace was bestowed on her to conquer all sin, who had the
honour to conceive and bring forth Him, who certainly had
no sin. If then we except this Virgin only, if we could
gather all the holy men and women that ever lived, would
they not confess, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves ? ’ [Opp. x. 144.)

The words are evidently a concession to Pelagius for
argument’ sake ; they certainly concerned actual, not original
sin ; for it is suggested that grace may have been given her to
conquer sin, not exemption therefore from conflict with sin :
and in other passages St. Augustine includes her in the
category of those who were born in original sin.*

The case then stands thus. In Scripture and in the

* See especially contra Julian, v. 15, Opp. x. p. 654: ‘Quod si dementis
est dicere, et sine dubio caro Christi non est caro peccati, sed similis
carni peccati, quid restat ut intelli gamus, nisi ea except^ omnem reliquam
humanam earnem esse peccati ? Et hinc apparet illam concupiscentiam, per
quam Christus concipi noluit, fecisse in genere humano propaginem mali : quia
Mariee corpus quam vis inde venerit, tamen earn non trajecit in Corpus, quod
inde non concepit/ &c.

108

Antenicene Fathers there is an utter silence concerning the
glories of the Blessed Virgin, her worship, or her intercession,
with the exception of one passage in Irenseus, the most
probable sense of which is such that no Christian could
object to it. In Scripture and in all ancient writers, by the
confession of a very high authority,* there is also a deep
silence concerning the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, even where others are spoken of as exempted from
ordinary sinfulness — here also, with one single exception,
viz. that of St. Austin, who declines to dispute about it from
reverence for our Lord, but who certainly gives no hint
whatever of her freedom from original sin — Two sentences
in 500 years, of at best doubtful significance. Compare
this with the language of Roman Catholic divines on the
same subject, for the 500 }rears last past. The comparison
will be a fair criterion of the relation of the present Roman
Catholic to the Primitive Church.

APPENDIX D.

Conferences at the Visitation.

It is proposed to state as briefly as possible the results ot
the Conferences of Clergy and Churchwardens which were
held from October 19 to November 5, at eight different
centres of the Diocese, on the afternoons of the days when
portions of the preceding Charge were delivered. These
centres were Cambridge, Newmarket, Huntingdon, Bury,
Sudbury, Bedford, Luton, and Ely.

The Conferences, preceded in the morning by Holy Com-

* Dr. Newman wrote the words which I have quoted, whilst he was yet a
member of the Anglican Church. I should be very sorry to hold him to any
opinion formed at that time. His words, however, are a simple statement of
fact ; and his bias at the time he wrote them was without question in favour of
the sinlessness, if not of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin.
This testimony therefore is perfectly good, and is fully confirmed by fact.

109

munion, were remarkably well attended (about 1,400 alto-
gether), and the debates, which have been fully reported in
many of the local journals, were conducted by Clergy and
Laity in a most frank, practical, hearty, and loving spirit.

Nothing could show better the advantage and desirable-
ness of thus combining Churchmen of all positions and
shades of opinion for mutual counsel. At the close of the
last Conference at Ely, the Bishop in conclusion expressed
his thankfulness to Almighty Grod for the thoroughly out-
spoken, earnest, yet kindly discussions which he had listened
to with so much pleasure and benefit, not only on this
occasion but throughout the whole of his visitation in his
extensive Diocese. Such honest, hearty, loving conferences
must be indeed a source of gratification to all, and great
encouragement in the holy work in which they were all
engaged.

The subjects for discussion were duly announced in the
official 4 Order of Proceedings,’ and were the same at each
centre.

I. The first subject was as follows : — 4 Are our Churches
generally attended as fully and as regularly as might on the
whole be expected, and especially by the poorer classes ?
Can any definite suggestions be made for increasing the
attendance at public worship, and the spiritual efficiency of
the Church, more especially in this Diocese ? ’

The following suggestions were made upon this question : —

1. A faithful and efficient ministry was required, the
Clergy trying to work themselves up, by Gfod’s grace, to
greater diligence in their sacred duties, avoiding as far as
possible distinct laywork and amusements tending to secula-
rize their minds or engross much of their time.

A bold, decided, scriptural teaching was demanded in
accordance with the definite doctrines and discipline of our
Catholic and Reformed Church.

It was thought the Clergy might at the Church’s special
seasons, at Ember-time, &c., call more attention to the

110

doctrines, offices, and duties connected therewith, both in the
Church and in the Schools.

2. Much difference of opinion as to the extent of non-
attendance at Church of the poor and working classes
especially was expressed ; but it was agreed that large num-
bers did not attend who might be brought to Church if those
who did attend set a higher and holier example.

The Churchwardens and principal laity, landlords and
employers of labour, it was thought, might do much more to
induce attendance at Divine Service and Holy Communion
by their own good example, by private suitable remarks and
encouragement to their servants^ workfolk and labourers,
and by inducing a habit of devotion in them through the
practice of daily family prayer, reading of Grod’s word> and
other like religious and social agencies.

3. Systematic pastoral and house to house visitation, by
the Clergy and a staff of organised lay helpers, male and
female, was earnestly pressed ; the time and nature of the
visits being thoughtfully adapted to the circumstances of each
case.

Evening visits to working men were recommended by
many, and special attention was called to the spiritual needs
of female servants.

Some complaint was made of want of sociability and
friendliness with all classes, especially labouring and trades-
folk, on the part of some of the Clergy. It was thought that
great hindrance to success was often due to too much exclu-
siveness and caste amongst the Clergy, who were sometimes
rather squires than pastors.

4. Careful, distinct, impressive rendering of the public
service by the minister and others was urged, whether by
reading or in monotone : due consideration being given to
the fact that the sense of hearing of many is not over-
acute, especially in country congregations and amongst the
poor and aged.

The desirableness of a distinct training of candidates for
Holy Orders in reading was adverted to.

Ill

It seemed pretty universally admitted that the skilled
workmen and laity generally were not likely to be drawn to
Divine worship by extreme ritualistic practices and services,
whilst a thorough, reverent, hearty, and even musical service,
would be likely to attract and be welcomed by them.

5. Much stress was laid by many upon the value of en-
couraging hearty congregational singing, especially of good
stirring hymns, the words and tunes of which should be in
the best sense popular.

Choral services on Sunday evenings, and on week nights,
were adduced as most successful in bringing young men
and women, as well as older folks, to Church, and creating
generally an increased interest in the services. Choirs,
Choral festivals, &c. were much recommended in this Con-
nection.

6. More attention* it was thought, might be often given to
the preparation of sermons, which should be vigorous, practi-
cal, and telling, in plain and simple English — not too long,
— 4 earnest talking,’ clearly and forcibly delivered, extempore
or otherwise, though it was believed the poor preferred
extempore sermons.

It was urged that the Clergy should not be afraid to preach
the elementary truths of the Gospel, or to look their people
in the face when preaching.

Colloquial, not controversial sermons and addresses, were
desired ; familiar lectures too, and addresses to children and
adults on the construction and contents of the Prayer Book,
on the life and teaching of our Lord and his Apostles, and
on practical religious duties.

7. Additional forms of services were called for, taken from
and supplemental to the Prayer Book, for a third service on
Sunday, or for shorter services on week days (not longer than
ten or fifteen minutes) in Church, and like services under
authority for Mission Houses, Schoolrooms, &c., according to
the exigencies of each parish, hamlet, or district.

Short, warm, earnest services seemed much desired, suited

to various classes and occasions, to lead up to the full Church
services.

It was thought the celebration of Holy Communion should
be more frequent and more prominent, often a separate ser-
vice as at the Visitation.

Sunday evening services in villages were called for.

The general opinion was decidedly averse to any serious
alteration or rearrangement of the present services of the
Prayer Book, whilst it was as decided that others of a short,
simple, hearty character, which Clergy and lay readers, &c.,
might use, were much to be desired.

The Litany with hymns and short sermon, or catechising,
was much approved of for a third service.

8. A greater need to provide good and sufficient accommo-
dation in Church for the poor and working classes, better
than formerly, seemed an unanimous opinion.

The striking success of the free and unappropriated Church
system, in many important towns of the Diocese, and in Ely
Cathedral, was much pressed as rendering the fuller adoption
of this system most desirable.

It was thought at any rate, that after the commencement
of Divine Service the Church should be perfectly free.

The abolition of close pews, and the substitution of open
seats, and even of chairs, was pressed, and seemed to meet
with great favour.

9. The need of subsidiary ministerial agenc}^ with the
sanction of the Bishop and under the direction of the Parish
Clergyman so as to reach all classes, was urged. In this view
a lower order (socially) of ministers was recommended, a
permanent diaconate, lay readers and deaconesses. The two
latter classes of helpers are working with good effect in the
Diocese.

10. Amongst other useful suggestions were the following
for increasing numbers at Church : —

(a) Lent Missions. ( b ) More attention to working of

Sunday Schools, (See Ely Diocesan Conference Report, 1869).
(c) More frequent exchange of duties and livings, (d)

113

Churches made warm, bright, and cheerful. ( e ) Greater
elasticity in our services, and more discretionary power in the
Clergy. (/) Churches open on week days for private as well
as public devotion. (( g ) Better exercise of patronage and of
Clergy discipline. ( h ) Removal of evils of sequestration and
non-residence, (i) Payment of wages on a Friday. (Je)
Earlier closing of Public Houses on Saturday. ( l ) Improved
dwellings of the poor, (m) Special prayer by laity for
success of their Pastor’s work.

11. Lay and Clerical co-operation was greatly pressed
in Rural Deaneries, &c., and the Bishop urged the forma-
tion of a Parochial Council or Committee of Communicants
and pious Laity, to assist, advise, and work in various ways
with the Clergy.

II. The second subject was : How can we best help the
Irish Church ?

The unanimous opinion of all the Eight Conferences is
embodied in the following resolution : c That the Synodical

gathering of the Clergy and Churchwardens of desire

to express their deep sympathy with the sister Church of
Ireland, and to assure her of their willingness to aid her in
the present difficulties, and they earnestly entreat their
brethren of the Irish Church to maintain inviolate the doc-
trine and discipline of the United Church of England and
Ireland.’

At Bedford Centre the word ‘ formularies ’ was inserted
between 6 doctrine ’ and e discipline.’

It was not considered desirable by those who had best
acquaintance with Ireland to be too forward in proffering
immediate aid, but several practical suggestions were made
for doing this at the proper time.

One of these was ‘to form an English reserve fund,’ to
help destitute Irish parishes which had no rich Church land-
lords, but poor, Presbyterian or Romanist holders of property.

Another was suggested by the Bishop, that perhaps the
Clergy of England might be willing, if necessary, to tax

114

themselves 1 per cent, upon their net income for so many
years. If the laity would follow this example, it was
thought a large fund might be obtained for Irish necessities.
A third plan was to raise an English and Irish fund to
enable the Clergy to leave their Commutation as Capital for
the future Church of Ireland.

There was an unanimous expression of hope that the Irish
Church would hold fast to the faith as it had been constantly
maintained by the United Church of England and Ireland.
All dictation to her was disclaimed, but it was the universal
feeling that we should continue as one undivided body, if
she did not suffer herself to be led away from that Primitive,
Catholic, Keformed doctrine and discipline, which had so long
bound us together in faith and hope.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET 8QUABE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

A CHARGE

DELIVERED TO

THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD,

I! is Vijjljtfi Visitation,

NOVEMBER n, 1869,

SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,

LORD HIGH ALMONER TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, AND CHANCELLOR
OF THE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

a Cljarp,

|^/JY Reverend Brethren and Brethren of the Laity ;

again the hours have borne us on along their
wonted course, and after another period of three
years we are once more gathered together, as one
body, for thought and counsel and prayer.

Amidst many storms around us they have been to
our diocese years of calm and, I hope, of progress.
Personally to myself, and I doubt not to many of
you, they have been, with all their trials, years of
much comfort in our work. Many of the institu-
tions of the diocese have in this period struck their
roots deeper into the soil, and have borne fruit more
abundantly. We have, too, worked together with
a glad harmony, and, I trust, with some success in
our great Master’s cause. The twenty-four years
we have now been permitted to spend together have
not been without their natural fruit of our under-
standing one another better, trusting each other more
thoroughly, and loving each other more warmly.

Again, there are gaps in our ranks ; again, loved
and honoured faces absent at our roll-call.

Thirty-five incumbents of the diocese have been
taken from us since last we gathered here : some
in comparative youth, some in old age ; some with
the sheaves ready for the garner standing in nume-
rous array round them, some just started with the
alacrity and strength of youth upon their life’s toil.
All are gone ; for them the day is past, for them the
night has come when no man can work ; the weary

b 2

workman rests now from his labour, and his works
do follow him. One, beloved by all of us, though still,
thank God, amongst us, has under the burden of ad-
vancing years resigned into younger hands the charge
of the archdeaconry of Berkshire. To him, before
you all, I desire to tender the expression of my
warmest thanks for services rendered to the diocese,
and aid given to myself as he only could render them
and give it, with that clear and strong intellect, and
that simple-hearted kindliness which made him able
to convince those with whom he had to reason, and
win those whom he convinced. May it please God
that Archdeacon Randall may he long spared in his
present matured intelligence to his many loving friends
and to a grateful diocese.

The records of diocesan work done, so far as mere
numbers are concerned, are soon run through. For
my own especial part, I have ordained for the work
of the ministry 145 Priests and 150 Deacons. These
figures are note- worthy as again contradicting the
impression that there is a general decrease in the
number of candidates for the holy ministry.

In the three years preceding the last Visitation,
there had been in this diocese an increase of seven
in the number of the Deacons, balanced it is true by
an accidental decrease of ten in the candidates for
Priest’s orders.

In the present period there is an increase in the
number of candidates both for Priest’s and for Dea-
con’s Orders ; of 10 amongst the Deacons, 150 being
set against 140 ; and of 24 in the Priests, 145
being set against 121. Nor is this the only mark
of progress. Again, I can say that there appears
to me to have been a marked increase in the highest

qualifications amongst those who have come to me
for the gift of Holy Orders. There has been in
these last three years much to contradict the state-
ment somewhat confidentially made, that the intel-
lectual standard of the candidates for Holy Orders
has declined ; whilst in the all-important prepara-
tion of a heart and life given to the work of the
ministry, there have been increasing proofs of a gene-
ral rise of tone in those who come to be ordained.
Besides the ordination of these priests and deacons,
I have acted cautiously and tentatively on the reso-
lution of the archbishops and bishops which I com-
municated to you at my last Visitation in favour of the
restoration amongst us of the order of Readers, and
admitted five to that function in the Church.

During these three years I have administered the
holy rite of Confirmation to 20,028 candidates, 5,969
more than in the corresponding space five Visitations
back, being an increase of more than one fourth of
the whole number now confirmed, whilst every ex-
ternal indication and many of your private reports
bring me to the joyful conclusion, that the growth
of the catechumens in spiritual fitness has more than
kept pace with their increase in numbers.

During the same time I have consecrated eighteen
and re-opened thirty-four restored churches ; and I
have preached 226 times in your churches.

The record of your far more abundant labours can-
not from the nature of the case be made so exact, but
I gather from your returns that there is a steady
growth in the spiritual work of the diocese. You re-
turn me a list of 22,336 as habitually communicating,
but from the omission of many parishes in which no
list is kept, this return falls much below the whole

number of your communicants. The increase in the
number of celebrations of the Holy Communion in
the last twenty-five years is one of the most remark-
able features of our diocesan history, and one for
which I humbly and heartily thank God. Let me
say for your encouragement that I hear on every side
that with an increase in the number of celebrations
there has been a proportionate increase in the total
number of communicants. Still in this matter of fre-
quency of communicating, we are far from having
reached the standard of primitive times, or even that
fixed by the Fathers of the Reformation, who con-
templated a weekly celebration in every parish, even
though its population was but twenty, if only four or
at the least three parishioners were ready to com-
municate with their minister.

One instrument of increasing the frequency of
celebrations and the number of communicants has
been found in the Lenten Mission, which has been
held each year in one of our counties. Every year’s
experience has the more convinced me that a great
blessing has rested on these Missions. Thus the
parish priest of the town at which one of these was
held, amongst the effects of which he had noted,
enumerates the following : — “ It led people to think
more of the Holy Communion as the central act of
Christian worship;” and again, he notes “the real
good it did to individual souls. Several became in
that week, and have continued to be, communicants.”
Other effects, too, which he found of it in his
parish are well worth recording. They are these : —

I. The great moral support it gave to the clergy
of the parish by

(a.) Making people regard their clergy’s words and

work more as parts of a whole scheme, rather than
the solitary sayings and doings of an individual.

(b.) The making them believe that the Church was
not wanting in ‘‘mightiness of word” amongst her
ministers.

II. The quieting of little party feeling.

III. The deep impression made by sermons.

Another writes to me : — “ The effect of the

whole Mission here was to give an impression of
organized life and power in the Church which many
were not aware of.” And again, he describes it, as
“ uniting the clergy more in their common work, and
renewing their energy.” From a third, I hear, —
“ It placed the Church before a people who had very
imperfect, if any, idea of Church principles as a great
reality.” It shewed them that spiritual fervour and
loving zeal are in her. Before the Mission, the mid-
day Communion was celebrated only fortnightly, with
an average of fifty-eight ; since, fortnightly, with
an average of ninety on ordinary days, and larger on
festivals : and at the early Communion, before the
Mission, the average attendance was eight, since,
twenty-two. He speaks of a similar increase in the
congregation, and adds, “ I am sure that there are
bright and happy memories of the Mission, and that
many who then first came, after years of neglect,
to God’s house, have continued to come.”

The Conferences at Oxford, which have been again
held under the laborious care of Canon Fremantle,
have also, I feel confident, been blessed by God to
the maintenance and increase amongst us of brotherly
love and of a common zeal for the service of our Lord
and Master. Oh, that to this diocese these graces
may hereafter be increased an hundredfold !

The answers you have sent me as to the special
hindrances of your ministry reveal all the sores of
society around us. By a vast consensus of opinion,
drunkenness is the greatest hindrance amongst us to
the spread of the Gospel of our Lord ; and beyond
the gross ignorance of some districts, and the brutal-
ized condition of the poor in others, a very general
consent traces the commonness of this sin to the
temptations thrown in the way of the less educated,
and the wrong done to them by the needless multi-
plication of beer-shops. For this leads not merely to the
increase of temptation, but also, through the compe-
tition which it engenders, to the poisonous adultera-
tion of the beer sold, and to the employment of the
most vicious baits to lead customers to the house.
As to these beer-shops, the summary, and, doubtless,
efficient remedy, if only it were not impossible, sug-
gested by one clergyman, is “ Abolish them.” Others
would close them early on Saturday night and through
Sunday. Opinions are divided as to the action of the
new licensing law ; but, upon the whole, the favourable
view predominates. Bad cottages stand high in your
catalogue of hindrances. The absence of religious
care for the employed by the employer is not far
below this : allied with this is the want of educa-
tion and of real godliness in the employing class.
The field-labour of women, with its consequence of
loose habits and neglected families, is stated as a com-
mon hindrance. Religious differences amongst our-
selves ; the wide spread of a cold, indifferent, tone of
religious duty ; the non-residence of a former incum-
bent ; encouragement by another of Dissent ; Dissent
itself, amongst the most universal ; Sunday trading
and Sunday labour ; the low state of education ; statute

fairs; the annual hiring of boys : — as to these, all are
agreed. Others find, in the want of distinctive Church
teaching, and in the colourlessness of surrounding
ministries, their great impediment.

It must be well that we should know each other’s
hindrances, and look on the shifting scene around us
as it presents itself to our brothers’ eyes.

The building, rebuilding, and restoration of our
churches and parsonage-houses has advanced during
these three years with augmented progress. The
thirty-four churches which have been, or are being
restored, are eleven more than those restored in the
three corresponding years, whilst eighteen have been
consecrated and twelve parsonage-houses have been
built. By these works, room has been provided in
our churches for between five and six thousand more
worshippers. Towards the expenses of these works
£4,675 have been contributed by our Diocesan
Church Building Society. Since the foundation of
the Society in 1847 it has been enabled, by the
returns to Pastoral Letters, subscriptions, and dona-
tions, to grant £32,072 to this great work ; and I
think it worthy of special record that when in 1865
its funds were almost exhausted, an appeal from me
to the diocese brought in at once to its empty coffers
£3,322 from 121 donors, the majority of whom were
laymen in the diocese a. With a like generosity, an
appeal from me on behalf of the Society for the
Endowment of the Poor Benefices of the diocese was
answered in 1867 by donations, again almost wholly
from the laity, of £1,250.

The Diocesan Board of Education maintains its
place of former years. It has in the last three
a See Appendix II.

granted £1,185 towards school buildings, £306 in
book grants, £210 in salary grants, and this year has also
allotted £50 for the encouragement of pupil teachers.

The Society for Augmenting our Poorest Benefices
has already raised many from a merely nominal in-
come to one which secures for the incumbent just
a bare subsistence, and so maintains the separate
ministry, the church and altar, amidst our scattered
populations.

The Diocesan Spiritual Help Society, with an an-
nual income of about £1,200 a-year, has enabled us
to supply to some of our most populous and needy
parishes forty-one additional curates. It is impossible
to over-estimate the importance, in an agricultural
diocese, of this arm of the Church’s work. It is, I
fear, useless to hope in the present day for any fresh
endowments except for our very poorest benefices ;
whilst the real straitness of means which marks those
which rise far above this level, is known to few but
those who have had personal experience of the fact.
One evil effect of this poverty of endowment is, that
it makes it impossible for the incumbent, from his
own means, to secure the assistance of a curate. Now
in many parishes, where the home population is large
and the church roomy, such assistance is essential
both for the public services, and, even more, for the
due visitation of the sick and whole : whilst in other
places, where populous hamlets, sometimes with a sepa-
rate chapel, are distant two, three, or four miles from
the parish church, the lack of a second clergyman is
equivalent to the exclusion of the old, the young, and
the infirm from the ordinary means of public worship
and the ordinances of grace. But even where this is
not the case, the enforced lack of assistant curates

seems to me to be a great evil to the Church. For,
first, such assistant curacies are the true training-
ground of our future incumbents ; and then, besides
this, the immediate loss both to the incumbents and
the parishes of a district is great. There are few
cases as to which it is more true that “ two are better
than one ” than in the spiritual charge of a parish.
For nothing more tends to correct that great evil of
our parochial system, the isolation of the parish
priest, than the presence of a second clergyman. It
checks that too autocratic rule which the single
rector can scarcely avoid ; it prevents a general
monotony, dulling if not destroying the elasticity of
the ministry in preaching, visiting, school-teaching,
and public services. It commonly unites together
men of different ages, thus tempering the eagerness
of the younger by the experience of his elder, and
often quite as usefully animating the repose of the
elder by the ardour of the younger man. It counter-
acts, too, that tendency to slovenliness which is the
constant temptation of lonely men, especially if they
are over- worked and under-handed. It makes it more-
over possible for the clergy to read and to think more
than those can do who are perpetually engrossed by
parochial duties. This may enable them to keep
somewhat more up to the intellectual activity of the
day, or, at all events, by maintaining some theological
reading, to prevent themselves from sinking into that
habit of a very wearying self-repetition which is in-
evitable where the soil is perpetually exhausted, and
never re-invigorated by study and thought.

Once more. Such an increase of the number of
the clergy would make easily possible that interchange
of services between different parish priests which is of

great value in keeping wakeful and alive both parishes
and clergy, whilst by securing to the clergy better
acquaintance with each other, and promoting unity in
work, it tends practically more almost than anything
beside to hinder the upgrowth of party spirit, with its
miserable tangling weeds of suspicion, stiffness, cold-
ness, and uncharitable judgments. For all these reasons
I rejoice in the firm root struck by our Spiritual Help
Society, and trust that it may cast forth its branches
with a yet wider spread and a more healing foliage.

Besides the ordinary returns which you have made
to me before, I have troubled you at this Visitation
with one new set of questions, and I thank you for the
care and courteously-yielded diligence with which you
have replied to them. Their purpose was to obtain as
exact an estimate as possible of the sum expended in
the diocese out of private charity upon distinctly
Church works during the last four-and-twenty years,
at which date our three counties were first conso-
lidated into one diocese. At my last Visitation, it
was suggested to me by several of you that such a
return which would shew what the members of our
Church had actually done within such a period would
be not merely a matter of interesting information, but
might in the present posture of Church matters be of
great practical use. For in the free discussion which
is now so common as to the value of religious
establishments, and the expediency of maintaining
them, one objection frequently urged against them is,
that they tend to repress the free and voluntary efforts
of Christian men. My own belief as to these effects
is the exact opposite of this. I cannot doubt that
where there is an existing body, possessed already of
endowments, which is doing faithfully its work, men are

far more ready to contribute to the increase of its
efficiency than they are to make incessantly-repeated
sporadic efforts to keep alive that which has per-
petually to awaken for its mere existence the ever-
diminishing flow of purely voluntary gifts. Here, as
elsewhere, “ the liberal deviseth liberal things.” Past
liberality tends to reproduce its own likeness in suc-
ceeding generations. Certainly I think the returns
which you have now made me bear out the conclusion
I had reached, for they shew that besides considerable
sums, the accounts of which we are not able to obtain
with sufficient accuracy to tabulate them in our esti-
mate, we have absolute returns of two millions one hun-
dred and twenty thousand five hundred and fifty-two
pounds seven shillings and three pence as having been
laid out in building, restoring, and endowing churches,
schools, and houses of mercy within this diocese since
the year 1845. Certain details b of this expenditure,
with which I will not now trouble you, I shall hope
hereafter to put into your hands in print. But the
largeness of the total sum, raised in a purely agri-
cultural diocese, and that by no means one of the
richest, establishes, I think, irresistibly the conclusion
that an endowed Church stimulates instead of repress-
ing the generosity of its members. Nor has this sum
been raised for our home needs by any selfish dis-
regard of the claims upon us from without. So far
from this being so, we have multiplied our efforts for
those who are without, whilst we have made these
great exertions for those who are within the diocese.
Besides giving increased aids to many separate mission
funds, we have risen, to take that single measure of
our efforts, from contributing in 1845 to the Society

b See Appendix III.

for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
£1,419 Os. 4d., to the contribution in the year 1867
of £4,702 15s. 6d., and from contributing to the
Church Missionary Society in 1845, £2,238 19s. 8d.,
to the contribution this last year of £3,350 c.

Over these twenty- five years, my brethren, you
will, I think, readily understand that I cannot on
this occasion of our meeting thus cast back my eyes
without awakening in myself conflicting feelings which
are almost too deep for utterance. It is not merely,
as it has been with me before, the bringing home to
me the fact that so large a part of my life and ser-
vice has been spent, and that my own great account
and the account of many of you who have laboured
with me, and whom I love so well, must be drawing
near ; it is not only that I am reminded that I have
now occupied this seat two years longer than the
longest-lived of my predecessors since the see was
founded ; but it is that I speak to you for the last
time ; that my staff of office must in a few weeks be
broken, and another take the charge with which my
life has become one.

It was not without the most anxious doubt that
I assented to this change, involving as it did the
severance of the dearest ties and the undertaking
severer labours with diminished means for their per-
formance. But upon weighing the whole case with
the aid of the best counsel I could obtain, I judged

c Still this sum might he vastly increased if every parish could
he made to feel the blessedness in taking part in such offerings.
Here is the result of a weekly offertory at an early celebration
for the Propagation of the Gospel, from January 3, 1858, to
November 21, 1869 — £172 Os. 9d. ; twelve years nearly, in a
country parish in Oxfordshire, with a population of 350, all poor
people.

that so the will of God was. I go back, therefore,
into the sphere of my earlier work in the Church of
Christ, to find there, thank God, many old friends
whose warm welcome allays, though it cannot heal,
the smart of separation from you. For — I am bound
to say it, — I believe that no Bishop ever had more
loving and more effectual support than you have
rendered me in this diocese. So it has long been,
yet ever growing and increasing as the years have run
on : and now my approaching separation from you has
drawn forth expressions of personal affection greater
by far than I before knew to exist, and declarations
of some good results with which God’s mercy has
blessed my poor labours which at once humble and re-
joice my heart. Turn which side I may I have but
the same words to say ; I thank you most heartily
for your generous and abundant help ; to the Arch-
deacons, to the Principals of Cuddesdon and of Cul-
ham, to the Rural Deans, to the School Inspectors,
to the officers of our different Diocesan Institutions,
lay as well as clerical, who have given, as an unpaid
service, a zeal, a judgment, and an untiring energy in
labour, which money never could have purchased, I
return my heartiest thanks. To the Laity of the diocese
generally I must say the same : they have through
these years stood nobly by their fathers’ Church ;
they have given us their money, their counsel, their
confidence, and their active support in ten thousand
ways ; as the Churchwardens of our parishes they
have ever helped and supported me ; they have, in
far the greater number of instances, received with
kindness, and carried out with alacrity, my official
directions ; whilst amongst those of our laity to whom
God has given this world’s wealth there have been
some who have built for us noble churches, and con-

tributed with a magnificent generosity to their endow-
ment and to all our diocesan works. To me per-
sonally as their Bishop they have shewn a loving-
kindness which, whilst I live, I can never forget:
suffering, in very many instances, official ties to turn
into the golden bands of generous friendship and
Christian affection : so that in very many times of
trial I may say with the great Apostle, “ I have had
great joy and consolation in their love d.”

And if it has been thus with the Laity of the dio-
cese, how, my brethren of the Clergy, can I thank you
enough for all your goodness towards me ? your
ready acceptance of all official requirements, your
abundance in labour, your unweariedness in love.
How differently, thank God, can I speak as to my
experience in this diocese from that which was the
heavy burden of the great Apostle of the Gentiles,
when in bonds and imprisonment the sorest of his
earthly trials was the sense of loneliness and deser-
tion breathed out in those touching words, “ These
only are my fellow- workers unto the kingdom of God,
who have been a comfort unto me.”

To pass by the struggles and trials through which
we have stood shoulder to shoulder together, resist-
ing sometimes the cold approaches of unbelief, some-
times the crafty assaults of Rome, sometimes the at-
tempted aggressions of the world, — how often have
we taken sweet counsel together, how often studied
God’s Word, prayed and communicated together ; how
firmly have these bonds of spiritual unity which reach
on in their mysterious power into the coming eter-
nity, bound us together. May God, even the Father,
and the Holy Ghost the Comforter, of His mercy keep
us all faithful, that through the merits of our only

d Ep. to Philemon.

Saviour we may meet before His presence with ex-
ceeding joy.

It does not seem to me fitting to-day that I should,
as I have been wont to do, address to you distinct
counsels for the future ; with that future it will be
for another to deal. But one last retrospect of
our common work we may, I think, profitably take
together to-day.

During this period many most important institutions
have grown up amongst us. And first as to education.
Besides those which are actually connected with the
machinery of the diocese, the vigorous life which has
stirred in it, has cast itself forth in foundations of
a more independent character. Such are the Colleges
at Radley, at Brad field, at Bloxham, and at Stony
Stratford, where the children of our gentry and clergy
are still trained in that blessed union of true religion
and useful learning which has ever flourished and
abounded in Church-of-England schools. For the
class immediately below these the training College at
Culham has for years past done a great work by
training up teachers for them. Through the ex-
traordinary energy and diligence of its Principal, sup-
ported by a Committee of remarkable power and
judgment, it has, I trust, weathered the storm which
the change in the conditions of public help awoke
against all these Colleges, and under the violence of
which many of them have perished. It has, I venture
to hope, before it years of increasing usefulness. No
Churchman can, I think, have carefully studied the
education questions of this day without seeing that
there never was a time when it was more important,
as well for the nation as for the Church herself, that
she should possess a body of schoolmasters who are

thoroughly impregnated with sound Church princi-
ples, and fitted by the completeness of their train-
ing in secular as well as religious learning, and above
all by their own religious life, to make their mark
upon the busy self-asserting generation to which we
minister.

But besides its direct results, Culham College has,
I am convinced, helped greatly to keep alive in the
diocese that awakened zeal for education out of which
its own foundation sprung. This has been the great
work of our Diocesan Board, and of that admirable
body of Church workmen, the Diocesan Inspectors.
With the example of Culham before them, and the
fostering help in various ways of the Diocesan Board,
other schools, especially for the great middle class,
have sprung up and are flourishing in the diocese.
It suffices for me to name one at Cowley under
Mr. Hurman, and one at Littlemore under Mr. Hurst,
to shew how widely this branch of our work is spread-
ing ; whilst the various parish schools have been
raised to a new level by the care and labour of the
Diocesan Inspectors. Alas ! for me, that I shall lose
the strengthening, exhilarating meetings for which
they were accustomed each spring to gather at Cud-
desdon Palace.

During the same time, the Theological College at
Cuddesdon has been founded, and come to maturity,
having now been fifteen years and a- half at work. The
gathering last summer of old students from so many
dioceses, all breathing the same spirit, was a most
animating sight to all who witnessed it. Every room
in the College has been, and continues to be, eagerly
engaged. It is not only full, but full of graduates of
the University ; indeed, of the last hundred students
two only have been non -graduates. We may, I think,

without presumption, venture to say, that the blessing
of God has rested largely on this institution. It has
been a home of prayers, — in which it has been my de-
light to join, — of reading, and of meditation. The holy
life, great heart, and high powers of the Principal,
with his thorough loyalty to the Church of England,
have incessantly poured down their influence, like the
dew upon the tender grass, on the students within its
walls. It has had the services, as Vice-Principal,
of the Rev. O. J. Reichel, well known by his pub-
lished works ; of a faithful and hearty chaplain ; and
of “ Prelectors,” who, in the persons of the present
Bishop of Calcutta, Canon Woodford, Canon Bright,
Mr. Davy, and Mr. Wilgress, have helped greatly to
raise its intellectual tone. Many a parish has had cause,
many, through God’s blessing, will, I trust, have cause,
to thank Him for the year or more of preparation which
their pastor spent within its walls. The whole of the
building-debt upon the College has been paid off;
a fund is growing for providing it with a fitter chapel ;
whilst the kindness of a band of true-hearted Church-
men, in and out of the diocese, has added to its en-
dowment what they have named “ the Wilberforce
Fund,’" to provide for its stability through coming
years. May its heads and its pupils, so long as it con-
tinues, hand on to future generations the holy, earnest,
self-denying Church-of-England moderation which has
so eminently marked its first three Principals and
those whom they have trained.

The Sisterhoods at Clewer and at Wantage have
grown up during the same period. High Christian
genius, firm faith, ardent love, and undaunted cou-
rage, alone could have founded them ; patience, so-
briety, and judgment, alone could have maintained

c 2

them. The terrible experience in former times of
what nunneries might become ; — how worldly, how
superstitious, and how scandalous, — made the attempt
to found Sisterhoods upon another and a purer model,
a work of almost hopeless difficulty. The undistin-
guishing eye of suspicion must naturally be very slow
to trace the distinction between the two ; and yet
there is a vital difference, The gathering together
women, and many of them very young women, too often
from mere motives of family convenience, the binding
them by irrevocable vows, and setting them to lead,
under the beguiling appellation of “religious/’ a life
of idle abstinence from the ordinary works of woman’s
place in the family, in the household, in the parish,
and in society, yet not devoted to active works of
charity, for Christ’s sake ; — this is a wholly different
thing from providing homes where holy women, whom
God’s hand has separated by external circumstances,
or an internal call from common family life, may live,
and pray, and work together so long as they see fit,
and from which they may retire again, if so they judge
it to be God’s will. Still, from their external resem-
blance, these new communities, though formed on an
idea so essentially dissimilar from the old, could not,
at their rise, fail to inherit the obloquy which the
memory of great past misdeeds is so fertile in provid-
ing. Such suspicions, moreover, could not abound
without creating another hindrance to the success of
these institutions ; for they tended to make the more
sober-minded and cautious fearful of entering them.
Yet, in spite of all these difficulties, two such Sister-
hoods, besides others of which I do not particularly
speak, because they have not been in the same degree
under my own observation, have grown up into great
institutions directly connected with the diocese.

It would, in my judgment, indeed, be well that
the Church of England should lay down her own
rules for these institutions ; for in the abeyance of
such rules too much responsibility rests in single
hands. Still, with the pressing want of such helpers
on every side of us, it would be impossible to wait
for such general regulations, and each one who is
called upon to act must do his best to mark out
the Church’s line concerning them, for the institu-
tions of which he is overseer. For myself, I have
never consented to be officially connected with any
which did not distinctly disown the system of irre-
vocable vows : accordingly, no such vows are allowed
either at Wantage or at Clewer. Both institutions
have grown and flourished : Wantage spreading to
a second house in Cornwall, and enlarging its field
of work by entering on the field of general educa-
tion ; and Clewer, besides affording shelter and the
means of spiritual recovery to eighty-six penitents,
having branched out into an orphans’ home with
forty-two beds always full, into a convalescent hos-
pital with twenty-four beds for men, twenty for wo-
men, and as many for children, — as many of them full
as the income of the hospital allows ; into a cot-
tage with ten beds for invalid ladies ; into mission
schools, and a mission chapel, with other works
now carried on at Oxford, London, Folkestone, and
in Devonshire e.

In supporting to the best of my power some of
these institutions, I was well aware that I must give
offence to those whom it often pained me to grieve,
who looked on them with grave doubt, or met them
with honest opposition. But much as I regretted this
e See Appendix IY.

result, I did not think that to avoid it I should do
right in standing aloof from any who were bent on
doing the work of Christ within the Church of Eng-
land, even though there were in their way of doing it
certain things of which I did not myself altogether
approve.

It has always appeared to me to be the duty of
a bishop of the English Church to throw himself
heartily, without stint or grudging, into the labours of
the clergy or laity of all the different schools of
thought which are allowed within her communion,
lie must, of course, have his own definite line of
thought and action ; the more definite the better.
But he ought not in my judgment to allow a diver-
gence from that type and model, within the limits his
Church allows, to weaken his sympathy with any
wTithin his sphere who are labouring earnestly for
Christ. And here I am speaking not of a cold
grudging assent to the lawfulness of their position,
but of all the fulness of help which he can give them
in their own mode of working, by his prayers, his per-
sonal co-operation, and his confidence. Such a rule of
action involves of necessity certain great difficulties.
It is sure, till it is well understood, to lead narrow-
minded men who can move but in a single groove, to
suspect that such a course is tainted with a want of
care for the absolute truth, and a sinful desire to
please men. These suspicions, bred in shallow minds
of intellectual feebleness, a bishop must live down. But
beyond these there is the further imputation ready, that
such a course tends to deprive the Church itself of all
definiteness of doctrine, and to make its teaching
a mere bundle of conflicting opinions, held artificially
together by the external bond of a common establish-

ment. Now if this licensed variety did exceed in any-
thing that which the Church has received as vital of
dogmatic truth, the objection would be true, and it
would be fatal ; for the Church exists to be the pillar
and ground of the truth, to hold and therefore to
hand on without addition, diminution, or adulteration
the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Of
differences, then, on points which constitute the one
faith, I am not speaking. But I do not believe that
such difference does, to any considerable degree, exist
amongst us. For it, where it does exist, I put in no
plea. I ask for it, within our own body, no toleration.
But I maintain that putting all question about these
master truths wholly aside, there is room for large
difference of tone, of feeling, and of the mode of ex-
pressing the common faith amongst those who hold,
and hold earnestly, the same word of God, the same
tradition of creeds, and the same definiteness of arti-
cles. The temper of one man’s mind leads him to
apprehend most readily, and to embody in his own
spiritual life most completely, one aspect of a mighty,
far-reaching, many-sided dogma. This leavens all his
own inner being and all his own teaching. And I
venture to say that it is well that it should be so.
Well for him, because what he has thus made his own
is the most real ; well for the Church, because, first,
what he most really holds he can most vividly express
and reproduce in others ; and secondly, because by
this permitted variance the many sides of the common
truth will be most faithfully maintained in themselves,
and most readily supplied for the spiritual sustenance
of others.

It is easy to say, as the Popish enemies of our
Church are so fond of saying, that thus our teachers

teach all conflicting theories, whilst theirs speak with
one utterance, and therefore give their people what
we cannot give to ours, the sameness and the cer-
tainty of truth. But the taunt proves as false under
examination as it is easy in the utterance. For, first,
they who use it do not all teach one doctrine. The
slightest acquaintance with their writings and their
internal action at once dispels the illusion. To name
but one instance. They range from the Augustinian
far nearer than we do to the semi-Pelagian theory of
grace. But farther. Whilst it is the essence of the
truth that it should be one, it is of the essence
of a living reception of that one faith by different
souls that it should in its subjective reproduction
within them differ in its modes of acting. All life,
because it is life, has of necessity this faculty of
diversity of reproduction combined with essential
unity. Dead things only can be stamped out with an
absolute ever-recurring identity of shape and propor-
tion. Instead, therefore, of considering this variety,
within allowed limits, as an evil, I hail it as a sign
of life ; and I would no more make every voice in
a diocese speak in exactly the same tone than I would
abolish the music of nature by requiring the same
note from every free songster in the brake.

There are, of course, limits to such a licence. If
the fundamental articles of the Creeds, if the authority
of God’s revealed Word, if the atonement wrought for
us on the Cross, if the gift of the Holy Ghost and the
life of the new kingdom of Christ are assailed, all
question of allowance within the Church is at an end.
Where the claim for permitted diversity distinctly
reaches up to these points, there is of course no diffi-
culty in our course. We have but to say in love, but

with all clearness, “ If any man teach any other Gos-
pel than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
But there is a vast range of spiritual teaching within
these well-defined limits as to the particulars of which
a minute and tyrannous positiveness savours far more
of the narrowness of a sect than of the real breadth of
Catholicity; and the modern Papacy, as to these, ex-
hibits far more exactly the temper of the Donatists
than that of any of the ancient Catholics. As to
these comparatively open questions, on the other hand,
the Church of England has forborne to exact as the
condition of conformity a mechanical exactness of
agreement, and as to these it has always seemed to
me that her ministers should act freely and gene-
rously in her spirit. In that spirit, my Reverend Bre-
thren, I may take you, amongst whom I have lived, to
witness, it has been my endeavour to administer this
diocese ; and it is to my acting on this rule, and to
your great kindness, your large forbearance with me,
and your wonderful confidence in me, that under
God’s grace I attribute the quietness, combined with
earnest vigour, with which we have been enabled to
work His work for this quarter of a century ; and
that now, when we are bringing to a close our united
action, I have the blessing of seeing amongst the
warmest of my friends representatives of every school
of thought amongst us. For myself I will say openly
that I could not have endured to have been the bishop
of a party when God’s providence had called me to be
the bishop of a diocese.

To a certain extent this rule of liberty as to thought
must apply also to the rule of external observance.
As to such outward forms indeed there need not, and
consistently with any uniformity there cannot be, so

large a licence. There need not be, because here the
sacrifice of choice to charity implies no dishonesty of
mind. He who could not honestly give up an opinion,
may with entire truthfulness give up a dress or a pos-
ture by which a brother is offended ; and without some
such sacrifices external uniformity is impossible. Feel-
ing this strongly, few things have more grieved my
own spirit than the course of recent controversies
about dresses and externals. With the mighty work
we have to do ; with the growing masses on every
side of us who need the simplest preaching of the
Gospel of Christ, and the most elementary instruc-
tion in the life of grace ; with the seething multitudes
of our great towns steeped in sin and suffering, and
with the irreligious coldness, dulness, and coarse sen-
suality which abound in so many of our country dis-
tricts, it is simply heart-breaking to see the zeal of
earnest spirits diverted from even passionate endea-
vours to bring the Name, the Cross, the power, and
presence of Christ home to such sufferers, and to see
it miserably wasted on unmeaning contests as to the
cut of a surplice, or the colour of a stole. In such
a strife both sides seem to me to be in the wrong,
because both exalt things comparatively indifferent into
an utterly undue importance. It is hard to under-
stand the religion which consists in refusing on the
one hand to wear a surplice, or on the other in con-
vulsing a parish in order to introduce into its public
services the startling novelty of a gorgeous vestment.

Still, as to these merely outward matters, I have
always held that, provided the law was not infringed
nor the weak brother for whom Christ died offended,
it would be hard to enforce on others my own dis-
inclination to change. Where, therefore, with the

rising tone of a parish there has been such a corre-
sponding rise in its ritual, I have always felt it to be
my duty in my office, instead of coldly discouraging
such accidents of growth, whereby perchance the
growth itself might be checked, to guide and moderate
rather than oppose their development. Life, even
with certain eccentricities, seems to me, after all, to
be so much better than death ; the sparkling stream,
even though it does brawl, is so far more lovely than
the reek of a stagnant pool, that I have always joy-
fully associated myself with the living workers of the
diocese, whether, in their fear of change they sought,
as to ritual observances, to maintain a somewhat
starved and unpicturesque simplicity of manner ; or
in their desire of acting by all lawful instruments
upon the souls of men, they adopted a more orna-
mented style of worship. A reasonable growth in the
decency and beauty of the externals of worship natu-
rally accompanies and often helps forward increasing
devotion, a growing sense of God’s presence with His
Church, and of the greatness of the service which we
ought to render to the Heavenly King. The restora-
tion of our churches, the comely and often beautiful
adorning of our chancels, the vast improvement in
our church-music, the greater order, efficiency, and
heartiness of our services, all instance this, and call
for our deepest gratitude to God. The time has
passed away, I hope for ever, when we could be con-
tent with dilapidated churches, the mould-stained
walls of which were broken by patches of plaster into
irregular deformity ; with their rattling rifty win-
dows letting in every blast from which the high sepa-
rating pews gave but scanty shelter, even to the
favoured occupant of the safest corner. All this,

I trust, is gone for ever : and with it the meanness
of the holy table, with its discoloured coverings, its
iron-moulded linen, and its discreditable plate ; with
the dingy surplice put carelessly or reluctantly on
in the face of the gaping congregation, preparatory
to the poor and often stammering duet between the
parson and the clerk, which a still surviving instinct
named 4 ‘ reading prayers.” All this, I hope, has vanished
from us for ever. With these, too, is disappearing,
would that it was wholly gone, the monotonous read-
ing from the pulpit of bought or borrowed essays,
which, with their dreary dulness and cold lack of
Christian truth, could reach no soul. For these great
and growing improvements we may all assuredly
thank God. Better, surely, is it to run the risk of
some occasional excess in development, than to bind
down the rising temper of the Church to the almost
obsolete poverty of a doubtful life.

But whilst I rejoice in this altered tone of our ser-
vices, I must not fail to remind you that there may
be changes, in what look at first sight to be mere
outward matters, which do involve great doctrinal
questions; and, as by the mere substitution of one
flag for another, there may be indicated in a very small
alteration, changes which reach very far indeed. As to
all such changes, it is of course impossible to be too
watchful. They may, if they are allowed to establish
themselves without question, lead, almost before we are
aware, into an alteration of our position as to great and
fundamental truths. Thus, for example, our Church
and nation did deliberately, at the Reformation in
the sixteenth century, reject at once the tyrannous
usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, and a whole
system of superstitious accretions which, under the

shadow of the Papacy, had, moss-like, overgrown the
fair proportions of primitive truth. This great res-
toration of an earlier purity was obtained at the price
of a convulsion which could hardly fail to injure and
even destroy some things, and to endanger more,
which, though good and valuable in themselves, were
by accident connected more or less directly with the
discarded errors. As time passed on, the loss of these,
inevitable as it was, and to be willingly endured as
the price of the great gain of recovered purity, began
to make itself felt. Negligence, carelessness, sloth,
and coldness of heart increased the evil. On this
state of things broke, as God saw tit to give them,
“ times of refreshing from the Lord.” Such, I doubt
not, was the great Evangelical movement, reviving
personal religion at the end of the last and the begin-
ning of the present century. Such again, I doubt
not, was that awakening of the Church’s corporate
life which is known as the Oxford movement. Both
of these aimed at arousing the dormant energies of
the spiritual life amongst us within our own reformed
Church. Both, in their main action, with human
imperfections, mistakes, and failures, tended to ac-
complish this result. The changes introduced or
attempted by each of these were a prolongation of
the actually-existing lines upon which our sacred
edifice is planned. They might, in many of their
details, be wise or unwise, successful or unsuccessful ;
but both sought to perfect, not to change the Church
of England. To the efforts therefore of both of these,
those who believed with equal faith in her Catholicity
and her Reformation might, if their minds had breadth
enough to free them from mere party trammels,
heartily wish God speed.

But there is another set of changes which men
may aim at introducing, changes which do not tend
to the perfecting of our own system, but to the in-
troduction instead of it, of that which is in whole or in
part really another. Such changes as these, whether
their advocates do or do not see the conclusion to
which they are naturally leading, do really symbolise
a body different from our own, and tend, so far as
they are allowed, to transform our own into it.

Suffer me to name to you, as an instance of what
I mean, one practice, the growth of which amongst us
I view with great apprehension, I mean a tendency
unquestionably manifested in certain quarters to
change the idea of the Holy Eucharist from a Com-
munion of the faithful into a function of the cele-
brating priest. Such a change is, in my most mature
judgment, no lawful progress in increased reverence
for that great Sacrament upon the lines of our own
Church. I cannot but regard it as the adoption of the
view, and therefore of the practice, of another Church,
to whose doctrine as to the Holy Eucharist it natu-
rally belongs, whereas it is absolutely subversive of
that which has been received amongst ourselves. For
in strict agreement as we believe with the words of
Holy Writ, and with the teaching of the primitive
Church, we do not regard the Communion of the
faithful as an accident of the Holy Eucharist, which
may be added to it, or separated from it, at will, leav-
ing the great function of intercession untouched by the
omission, but as of the very essence of the Sacrament.
So it was at the institution: “Take, eat, this is
My Body.” The mysterious presence and the actual
Communion are bound indissolubly together. So they
are in St. Paul’s address to the Corinthian Church :

“ The bread that we break, is it not the Communion of
the Body of Christ ?” Such was the custom of those
first Christians who came together on the first day of
the week, not to see even an Apostle celebrate, but
to break bread, to partake, that is, plainly, themselves,
of the consecrated element. From this the solitary
Mass of Borne is so absolutely unwarranted a devia-
tion, that we can have no assurance that it does not
altogether overthrow the very nature of the Sacra-
ment. It is certain that this practice is most inti-
mately connected, both as cause and consequence,
with the greatest practical corruptions of the Papal
Communion. Whatever, then, tends to its introduc-
tion amongst ourselves appears to me to threaten the
existence of our whole religious system. Such ten-
dencies I see in the attempt to make the celebrations
of the Holy Eucharist at our principal Sunday Morn-
ing Service impressive, if not gorgeous, as a dis-
play, whilst the congregation are urged to remain
through the service as spectators, but not to partahe
of the Sacrament as communicants. Such a ten-
dency I detect in the multiplication of choral com-
munions, where few members of the choir communi-
cate. The very purpose for which these practices are
recommended seems to me at variance with the true
idea of the Eucharist ; for effectual with God, as we
doubt not, through Christ our Lord, this great ap-
pointed act of the Church’s intercession is, I know no
ground for supposing that prayer offered up by those
who are present at the celebration but do not partake
in it is one whit more prevailing than prayer at any
other time or in any other place. Nor does it seem to
me that a surrounding crowd of non-communicants
adds any honour to the Sacrament. On the con-

trary, to remain and not to communicate seems to
me to dishonour Christ’s institution, and to injure
the soul of the worshipper. Far truer, far more reve-
rend, far safer for the unprepared spirit, was the old
warning, which, before the sacred mysteries, pro-
claimed to the unbaptised, to the catechumen, and
to the unreconciled penitent that he should depart.

Against these changes, then, and such as these,
I venture with a parting voice to warn you. Never,
so far as I can read the signs of the times, was there
a period when re-union with the corrupt communion
which has ever persecuted with a thoroughly Donatist
hatred our Reformed Church, was more impossible
than now. More and more, by an arrogance which
increases with her weakness, by a growing intolerance
for truth which she once endured, by a new fruitful-
ness in error, and by a blind infatuation which looks
to me most like to a judicial sentence, which makes
her able to forget truth alone and to learn nothing
but falsehood, the Papal See is alienating from itself
its own Italy, its favourite Spain, its old adherents
in Germany, and its most enlightened children in
France. At such a moment, we are told, its hopes
are concentrated on England. It has always been,
it still remains, the special charge of the English
Church to resist these insidious assaults. Nor, God
helping her, will that Church resist in vain. The
sects, like the undisciplined mass whose burning zeal
cannot compensate in the terrible time of an invasion
for their lack of disciplined movements and compact
organization, would soon fall before her : but the
Catholic Church of England, whilst she is true to
herself and to her God, can, and in Christ’s strength
I venture to say will, ward off from this nation so

tremendous an evil as its subjugation to the yoke of
the Papacy. Strange, indeed, it may appear to some,
that empty visions such as these, which seem almost
to belong to a delirious dotage, should pass before
the eyes of the old enchantress. But they are not
wholly without some semblance of probability. I will
not detain you now to examine with me the curious
problem of those laws of thought which ever make
such oscillations of opinion possible. I will content
myself with urging on your consideration the reasons
for resisting the danger, and suggesting one or two
modes of keeping guard against it.

We should then, I think, most earnestly resist all
real movement towards Rome, first, because its ac-
complishment would most certainly involve the loss
of that blessed heritage of the truth of God, which, of
His great mercy, through the fires of martyrdom and
the anguish of a whole generation of our fathers, He
has given to us ; and next, because any degree or
semblance of such movement does more than anything
besides to help on, by the shock which it gives to
our long- established habits of belief, the progress of
that flood of lawless infidelity which Revelation shews
to us as the plague of the last days, and which
seems to have been already poured largely forth by
the angels’ ministers of wrath upon the air around
us. Already we have, I believe, so suffered. Faith
amongst us has already endured a far ruder shock
from perversions to Rome, than from those scientific
discoveries which are by some supposed mainly to
endanger its continuance. Between true Science and
the Christian Revelation there can be no conflict.
The Queen of sciences must be at one with her im-
perial sisters, even though the too eager and perhaps

half-instructed followers of each may indulge in
passionate brawls and unseemly contentions. Fof
whilst there are those who bring true Science into
disrepute with believers, by setting up her claims as
hostile to the Christian faith, there are also those
amongst ourselves who decry Science in order to
exalt Revelation. The one evil creates the other.
Surely any dread or hatred of Science is unworthy of
a Christian man. For his God is the God of nature
as truly as He is the God of grace. Nor need we fear
for the result if short-sighted men do seek to array
the powers of Science against Christianity. The as-
saults of such as these upon the sacred deposit of the
faith the Church has from the first endured and de-
feated, and she can endure them again, and again
defeat them. Only internal corruption can make
her fall before her enemies. Whatever, therefore,
weakens within herself the heart of faith is her chief-
est danger, and this evil has been wrought in this
generation by the perversion of mighty ones amongst
her children to the corruptions, the untruthfulness,
and the superstition of the Papacy. Against this, as
a real and great danger, we are bound to strive.

The main outline of that strife, as we ought to
wage it, it is not difficult to trace. There must first
be kept alive amongst ourselves a high estimation of
the value of that truth which God has given to us ;
that is, of the Christian dogma in their simplicity,
of the Word of God in its authority, of the Church
of Christ in the completeness of its organization and
the fulness of its spiritual powers. There must be
this, to make us vigilant in guard and ready in act to
beat back the first assault.

Next, there must be unity amongst ourselves.

How little do men estimate at their full weight of
evil to the cause of Christ, those too common faults
of hard words, peevish suspicions, and unbrotherhood
in action ! What a grieving of the blessed Spirit of
unity, what a dividing of hearts, what a weakening
of hands, what a scattering of faith is the fruit of
this, and yet how decently is it veiled over with the
specious show of zeal for the truth, and fearlessness in
its defence ! To you, Brethren, I speak as to those
to whom God has given largely hitherto of this spirit
of unity, and I beseech you cultivate it yet more and
more, spread it wider around you, proclaim its bless-
edness, and be witnesses of its power.

But beyond all else, if for our Church, our country,
and our age, we are to do the work of God, we must
each one grow and abound more and more in the
deep mystery of personal oneness with Christ our
Lord. There must be no tarrying on the threshold,
but a pressing in to the full knowledge and enjoy-
ment of this blessed companionship. Respectability,
earnestness, action, spotless orthodoxy, ceaseless la-
bour, patient, successful study : all these are need-
ful, all admirable ; but all of these must fail of the
great end if there be not in us, as members of His
Church, yea, and yet more abundantly as ministers
of His Word and Sacraments, a close, entire, per-
sonal union with Him. We cannot witness of Him,
we cannot be filled with His strength, unless having
found peace through the blood of His Cross we have
each one borne to Him the mystery of a life, laid it
down at His feet, taken it again from His pierced hands,
and then sought in prayer and meditation and holy
communion to know more of His actual indwelling,
so that He is one with us and we one with Him.

d 2

Into the full knowledge for yourselves, Brethren
beloved in the Lord, of that mystery of Christ’s pre-
sence in us, may you be led by the grace and power
of God the Holy Ghost. Unto His good keeping, by
whom I have been for a season set over you in the
Lord, I solemnly commend you, and as one who
knows his own utter weakness and deep unworthiness,
I beseech you to offer up to our God your prayers and
supplications for me when I am parted from you, as
you have done when I was present with you. For
those prayers, for all the kindness, forbearance, con-
fidence, help, and love which for four-and -twenty
years you have given me, I once again thank you
heartily in the Lord. May He reward you for it.
May He make His grace to abound more and more
toward you, and minister to you in His good time an
abundant entrance into His everlasting kingdom. The
last word almost refuses to be spoken, but Brethren
of the Clergy, Brethren of the Laity, I bid you in
Christ’s name farewell in the Lord.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

List of the Incumbents who have died in the interval
between the Bishop’s Visitation in 1866 and that of 1869 : —

Bev. William Stephen, Vicar of Bledlow, Bucks., Jan. 1, 1867.

Bev. George Alaric Moullin, Bector of West Woodhay, Berks.,
May 8, 1867.

Bev. Harry Walter Sargent, Incumbent of St. John Baptist,
Oxford, July 18, 1867.

Bev. Charles Marsham, Vicar of Stoke Lyne and Caversfield,
August 24, 1867.

Bev. John Hart, Bector of Adstock, Bucks., Sept. 10, 1867.

Bev. Henry Biddulph, Bector of Standlake, Oxon., Sept. 19, 1867.

Bev. Henry John Passand, Bector of Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxon.,
Oct. 16, 1867.

Bev. William Hazel, Bector of St. Peter, Wallingford, Berks.,
Oct. 28, 1867.

Bev. Florence James Wethered, Vicar of Hurley, Berks.,
Jan., 1868.

Bev. George Hough, Bector of Yelford, Oxon., August, 1867.

Bev. Herbert White, Incumbent of Warborough, Oxon.,
Feb. 2, 1868.

Hon. and Bev. Freberic Bertie, Bector of Wytham, Berks.,
Feb. 4, 1868.

Bev. Thomas Dand, Bector of Bletchingdon, Oxon., Feb. 5, 1868.

Bev. William Hanbury, Bector of St. Ebbe, Oxford, Feb. 11,1 868.

Bev. Aris Henry Bourse, Incumbent of Coggs, Oxon., Feb.
12, 1868.

Bev. Charles Fort, Bector of Lower Heyford, Oxon., May 1 8, 1 868.

Bev. Bobert Coulthard, Bector of Sulhampstead Abbotts with
Sulhampstead Banister, Feb. 4, 1868.

Bev. Charles Barter, Bector of Sarsden, Oxon., June 24, 1868.

Bev. William Thomas Eyre, Incumbent of Ilillesden, Bucks.,
July 8, 1868.

Rev. Edward Stanley James, Vicar of Letcombe Regis, Berks.,
July 24, 1868.

Rev. Charles Blackman, Rector of Cbesham Bois, Bucks.,
July 26, 1868.

Rev. Arthur Baker, Rector of Addington, Bucks., August, 1868.
Rev. "William Bell, Rector of Lillingstone Dayrell, Bucks.,
August 20, 1868.

Rev. Thomas Carter, Vicar of Burnham with Boveney, Bucks.,
Oct. 8, 1868.

Rev. Richard Rice, Rector of Eaton Hastings, Berks., Sept.
29, 1868.

Rev. Walter Brake, Vicar of Brad well, Bucks., Dec. 27, 1868.
Rev. Robert Edward Hughes, Rector of Alkerton, Oxon.,
Jan. 4, 1869.

Rev. George Candy, Vicar of South Newington, Oxon., Feb.
4, 1869.

Rev. Frederick Edwin Lott, Vicar of Bampton Lew, Oxon.,
Feb. 12, 1869.

Rev. Theodore Bouwens, Rector of Stoke Hamond, Bucks.,
Feb. 18, 1869.

Rev. Archibald Robert Hamilton, Vicar of Greenham, Berks.,
April 14, 1869.

Rev. Henry Alison Dodd, Vicar of Sparsholt with Kingston
Lisle, June 28, 1869.

Rev. Ellis Ashton, Rector of Begbroke, Oxon., August 6, 1869.
Rev. Richard Knight, Vicar of North Marston, Bucks., Sept.
26, 1869.

Rev. Charles Forbes, Vicar of South Banbury, Oxon., Sept., 1869.
Total, 35.

APPENDIX II.

Oxford Diocesan Spiritual Help.

Probable Annual Income .

£ 1,240

Grants made this year

1,525

„ already claimed to October 26 .

1,290

1866.

1867.a

1868.

1869.

£ s. d.

£ s.

s. d.

Donations

36 5 0

213 15

2 0

Subscriptions

572 14 5

545 1

451

17 6

387

Collections .

224 10 1

1,085 15

115

1 2

a Pastoral Letter year.

That is to say, the subscriptions have been steadily de-
creasing by death or removal. The donations and collec-
tions grow less between the Pastoral Letters. In 1867,
the Augmentation of Benefices’ Fund was our rival at the
latter part of the year. Not being able, like the other Socie-
ties, to close our hand at any moment, — being bound to give
considerable notice before the withdrawal of a grant, — we
have the more need to be anxious about our finances, and to
press for vigorous collections in 1870. Would the Rural
Deans make a special attempt to raise our Subscription List ?

Assistance is given —

(1.) To large and closely-crowded town populations.

(2.) To extensive parishes, with sparse populations and
double churches.

(3.) To incumbents suffering from temporary or perma-
nent infirmity.

In all cases the ecclesiastical incomes of the recipients
being insufficient for the entire support of a Curate.

Forty-one Clergy are thus assisted, viz. : —

From the County of Oxford ... 12

„ „ Berks. . . . 11

„ „ Bucks. ... 18

Old grants are revised, and applications for new grants
considered annually, by a Sub-Committee of eleven persons,
who (after communication with the Bishop) present their
recommendations to the General Committee of the Society.

In all cases, when from increase of ecclesiastical income,
or from restoration to health, grants have been given up, we
have received most grateful expressions from the incum-
bents, and, in some cases, annual subscriptions also. The
Church needs active living teachers not less than decent
fabrics.

S. Edwardes.

Oxford Diocesan Board of Education.

Receipts. Average of subscriptions, &c., for the three years last
past, 1867, 1868, 1869, £400.

Proceeds of the Pastoral Letter issued in 1866, £988.
Expenditure. Culham College, £300 a-year.

School Buildings in 1867 . .250

„ „ 1868 . . 550

„ „ 1869 . . 385

Total of 3 years 1,185

Book Grants in 1867

1868

1869

Salary Grants in

5 5 55

1867

1868
1869

. 94

. 91

. 121

Total 306

. 50

. 70

. 90

Total 210

The Board has also in the present year devoted £50 towards the
increase of Pupil Teachers. The proceeds of the Pastoral Letter
of this year amount at present to £670.

Diocesan Church Building Society.

The following are the Statistics for the years 1867, 1868,
and 1869.

The last Quarter of 1869 is, of course, not included in
this statement, although in the preceding Triennial return
the figures for the entire year were given.

5 New or Bebuilt Churches.

44 Restored Churches.

1 School- Chapel.

12 Parsonage Houses.

Amount of Grants made towards the above objects, £4,675.
Estimated cost of objects so assisted, £95,323.

Eree Sittings gained 3,998
Appropriated 770

4,768

Since the commencement of the Society in Feb., 1847,
the figures stand thus : —

66 New Churches.

28 Rebuilt.

230 Restored.

72 Parsonage Houses.

396

The total amount expended in Grants has been £32, 072.
Estimated cost of objects so assisted, £520,398.

Free sittings gained 42,330
Appropriated 4,348

46,678

Result of Pastoral Let-
ters issued on behalf of the <
Church Building Society.

Year.

f 1851.
‘ 1854.
1859.
1862.
1865.

L 1868.

Amount.

£ s. d.

1,337 16 7

1,447 9 11

1,404 10 5

1,379 3 4

1,866 10 8
1,535 17 1

Total 9,071 8 0

It is more easy to give with perfect accuracy the amount
of Grants, &c., than the number of objects assisted by the
Society; since an object, in reality one, becomes in progres-
sive work doubled or trebled, so far as the Board is con-
cerned in the distribution of the Grants, e.g. St. Luke's,
Maidenhead, and others.

And in addition to the above Statistics, it is but right

to state that in 1865, &c., when the funds of the Society
became excessively low by reason of the heavy pressure upon
them, the Bishop of the Diocese made a “ Special Appeal,”
the result being a contribution of £3,322 from 121 donors,
the majority of whom were laymen of the diocese.

( J. Dodd, Hon. Sec.

I Jas. H. Ashhurst, Hon. Treas.

(i Signed )

R. Ch., stands for Restored Church; _ZV. Ch., New Church; Reb. Ch., Rebuilt
Church ; P. H., Parsonage House.

Name.

Object.

Deanery.

1867.

Ellesborough .

R. Ch.

Wendover

Claydon ....

P. H.

Deddington

Lee ....

R. Ch.

Wendover

100

Aylesbury

R. Ch.

Aylesbury

200

Harwell ....

R. Ch.

Wantage

Fingest ....

R. Ch.

Marlow

St. Lawrence, Reading

R. Ch.

Reading

200

Farnh am -Royal

R. Ch.

Burnham

Langford

R. Ch.

Witney

Lower Heyford

R. Ch.

Bicester

Edlesborough .

R. Ch.

Mursley 2

Bletchley

R. Ch.

Newport 2

Abingdon

N. Ch.

Abingdon

100

Abingdon

P. H.

Abingdon

100

Maidenhead

P. H.

Maidenhead

Headington Quarry .

P. H.

Islip

Little Faringdon

P. H.

Witney

Hailey ....

Reb. Ch.

Witney

Grendon Underwood

R. Ch.

Claydon

Buckland

R. Ch.

Wendover

Lamborne

Sch. Chap.

Newbury

1868.

Headington Quarry .

P. IP.

Islip

North Hincksey

P. H.

Oxford

Crow marsh

R. Ch.

Nettlebcd

Buckland

R. Ch.

Yale of Wh. Horse

Minster Lovell

R. Ch.

Witney

150

Wendover

R. Ch.

Wendover

150

Bois Hill, Chcsham

P. H.

Amcrsham

100

Chearsley

P. H.

Wad do sd on

100

Bampton

R. Ch.

Witney

200

Lillingston Dayrell .

R. Ch.

Buckingham

Middleton Stony

R. Ch.

Bicester

! 75

Fleet Marston .

R. Ch.

Claydon

ame.

Object.

Deanery.

Ambrosden

R. Ch.

Bicester

Brize Norton .

R. Ch.

Witney

100

Penny Stratford

P. H.

Newport 2

Linslade

R. Ch.

Mursley 2

100

Beaconsfield

R. Ch.

Amersham

130

Stoke Lyne

R. Ch.

Bicester

Quainton

R. Ch.

Claydon

150

West Hanney .

R. Ch.

Wantage

West well

R. Ch.

Witney

Hampton-Poyle

R. Ch.

Islip

100

White Waltham

R. Ch.

Maidenhead

100

Wooburn

R. Ch.

Burnham

St. Luke’s, Maidenhead .

N. Cli.

Maidenhead

150

Chesham

R. Ch.

Amersham

150

Shiplake ....

R. Ch.

Henley

Little Tew

R. Ch.

Deddington

1869.

Emberton

! R. Ch.

Newport 1

Clanfield ....

R. Ch.

Witney

Checkendon

R. Ch.

Nettlebed

Ramsden

Reb.Ch.

Chipping- Norton

! 100

St.Peter-in-the-East, Oxford

P. H.

Oxford

Langley-Marish

P. H.

Burnham

Chadlington

Reb. Ch.

Chipping-Norton

Swallowfield .

R. Ch.

Reading

150

Lathbury

R. Ch.

Newport 1

Shipton-on-Cherwell

R. Ch.

Woodstock

New Windsor .

R. Ch.

Maidenhead

100

St. Luke’s, Maidenhead .

N. Ch.

Maidenhead

Beaconsfield

R. Ch.

Amersham

Society for Augmenting Poor Benefices.

This Society has, during the last triennial period, entered
upon a new stage. The original plan was to make general
efforts to increase the subscription list, and once in three
years to bring this work, by a great meeting at some one or
more centres, before the laity of the diocese. But in 1867, for
various causes, this was not possible. Instead of a great meet-
ing the Bishop addressed a letter to the laity, which was
widely circulated among them. Nearly £1,250 was pro-
mised to this work, the subscriptions in many cases being
spread over three years. A Pastoral Letter was also issued ;
and sermons preached in 168 parishes added materially to

our funds. From the sums thus collected and an annual
subscription of about £550, Grants have been made in the
years —

1867 to 19 parishes of £1,808 to meet £3,367

1868 „

1,283

„ 4,825

1869 „

975

„ 2,225

In all

4,066

10,417

Resulting, if all the Grants had been accepted, in an addi-
tion of more than £30,000 to the poor livings. Some of
these, however, have not been taken up by the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, and the offers for the last year have only
just been made to them. In all cases, however, it is the
smaller benefactions and the less populous parishes which
have been passed by by them. At present, however, the
effort of 1867 has been worked out, and unless some large
donations be placed in our hands during the next three
years, we shall be forced to circumscribe our sphere of
action. At the same time, fresh calls for our Grants are
always arising, and the applications and benefactions for
1869 shewed no diminution.

C. D. Goldie, Secretary.

O w •

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within the Diocese / 2,120,552 7 3 hundred and fifty-two pounds, seven shillings and three

APPENDIX IV.

Appeal by the Sisterhood of St. John Baptist,
Clewer.

The work of the Sisters at Clewer is at present greatly-
hampered by a debt remaining, after the exertions which
have been made to purchase land and erect buildings for
carrying out their various objects. A very considerable
sum of money has been expended, and institutions of great
and permanent benefit secured to the Church of England
as the fruit of their labours, and of those who have aided
them. It is thought that if the amount of what has been
done be laid before the friends of such homes of charity,
many would come forward at this crisis to relieve the Sisters
from a pressure which cripples their efforts, and involves
them in considerable difficulties. It should be stated that
these pressing liabilities have in great part occurred from
the circumstance, that one of their chief works was com-
menced only just before the late pecuniary depression, which
has, more or less, affected all charities, and in this case, as
in so many others, disappointed hopes of assistance which
had not unreasonably been entertained.

The work which the Sisters are carrying on was com-
menced twenty years ago, and since its foundation the fol-
lowing undertakings have been established at Clewer, in-
dependently of what they have been enabled to do else-
where ; the cost of each undertaking being given as nearly
as possible.

The first purchase was of an Estate, consisting of fifteen
acres with an old house upon it, which has since been taken
down and replaced by the present House of Mercy — the
Parent Home of the Sisterhood. This purchase cost <302,500.

The House of Mercy, including the chapel, laundries,
fittings for supply of water and gas, drainage, walls to
protect the nremises, with necessary furniture, cost about
<£17,000.

It accommodates about 100 persons, of which number 75
are Penitents, 25 Sisters or workers under them.

St. John’s Home, for 24 orphans and 18 industrial train-
ing girls, was the next building erected on the same estate,
and with its necessary fittings and furniture cost about
£3,500.

The next purchase was of additional land, contiguous to
that already purchased, and now forming with it one estate
of 22 acres, all freehold, at a cost of £2,800.

The value of land in the neighbourhood had greatly risen
since the original purchase, and the new property was the
more costly, because it has an extensive road frontage.

On this newly purchased ground, St. Andrew’s Convales-
cent Hospital, capable of accommodating 24 men patients,
20 women, and 20 children, has been erected; and with
laundries, out-buildings, supply of water and gas, and
other fittings and necessary furniture, the cost has been
about £15,400.

This building is not complete, the Chapel, among other
parts, being still wanting.

The laying-out of the ground to form gardens and walks
for the patients, involved a considerable amount of labour,
planting, carting materials, &c. It cost £300.

On the same part of the estate has been built, the special
gift of a friend, St. Andrew’s Cottage, a Convalescent Home
for Invalid Ladies. The cost of this building was about
£1,350.

The above-named Houses — the House of Mercy, the Or-
phanage, the Convalescent Hospital, and the Convalescent
Home, — are open to receive inmates from any part of
England.

Close by, Almshouses have just been built for 12 poor and
aged persons or couples, half being intended for parishioners
of Clewer. The contract for these, independent of fittings
and furniture, is £2,100.

The last of this series of Institutions is St. Stephen’s Mis-
sion, planted in a part of the Parish of Clewer bordering on
Windsor, where a large population has within a few years
grown up without any provision for Church or School.

The land on which this Mission has been planted, in-

eluding a site for a proposed Church to complete the settle-
ment, cost .£400.

Raising the ground above the highest flood level, forming
the play-ground for the school, and fencing, cost about an
additional .50100.

The Mission House includes Schools for the children and
infants of the poor, and female scholars of the upper class,
rooms for Sisters, School-mistresses, and Pupil-teachers,
a kitchen, and storerooms for the supply of the poor of the
district. The cost was about £3,500.

The number of children now on the books is 230, including
infants of the poorer class, and 51 scholars of the upper class.

To these various sums is to be added an endowment for
Clergy ministering in the works situated at Clewer, <£3,500.

The sum total of these several items amounts to £52,450.

The value of this sum, embodied in permanent institu-
tions, on freehold sites, has been dedicated to the service of
Almighty God, and secured by legal documents to the
Church of England. A considerable portion of this sum
has been given by the Sisters themselves, thus devoting
their substance as well as their lives to the objects which
they have at heart. The sums mentioned represent actual
possessions in separate institutions capable of further de-
velopment, as the number of the Sisters and the means at
their command increase; and this has been done while
a large income had to be raised annually to meet current
expenditure in the works completed. Thus, e.g., not less
than £1,200 a-year has been annually raised to meet the
expenses of the Penitents, &c., in the House of Mercy.

It is hoped that after such undertakings have been thus
far carried out, it will not seem an unreasonable request to
ask for special aid to clear off a debt, which, at the close of
the exertions that have been made, presses heavily on the
Sisters who alone are responsible for the deficit.

It should be added that the lands and the buildings on
them are so secured, that they cannot be mortgaged, a pro-
vision which has been considered to be of great ultimate
benefit, though causing immediate difficulty.

The sum required to clear off the deficit remaining on cer-
tain of the buildings above described, amounts to .£6,700.

For aid to meet this debt I venture very earnestly, on be-
half of the Sisters, to plead, trusting that the circumstances
stated are sufficient to warrant such a public appeal.

Should it be more convenient to those who are kindly dis-
posed to assist, contributions can be distributed over a period
of five years.

Of the Clergy who may kindly befriend our work I would
ask an Offertory, when it may be convenient.

To any who may desire to make known our need, copies of
this paper for distribution will be sent if applied for.

Mr. H. G. Heald, 160, Fleet-street, London, is appointed
Collector, and is authorized to receive Contributions made in
answer to this Appeal.

Contributions are also requested to be sent to the under-
signed, the Warden, or to the Superior, House of Mercy,
Clewer, or to the London and County Bank, Windsor.

Clewer Rectory, Windsor,
Nov., 1869.

T. T. Carter.

£ s. d.

His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Lord Bishop of Oxford, Visitor .

The Lord Bishop of Gibraltar

. 25

Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone .

lion, and Yery Rev. the Dean of Windsor

. 25

The Earl Beauchamp (in five years) .

. 100

The Dowager Marchioness of Bath

Lady Augusta Stanley

Augustus Arthur, Esq.

. 200

Rev. T. T. Carter (in five years)

. 100

House of Mercy, Clewer, Windsor.

The House of Mercy is always full; at this moment there
are 86 penitents in it.

The Orphans* Home has 42 beds for children or indus-
trial girls, always full.

St. Andrew’s Convalescent Hospital lias 24 beds for
men, 20 beds for women, 20 for children; kept as] full as
our funds will allow. We have had many inmates pass
through the Hospital in the course of the year, October,
1868, to October, 1869 : —

Men, — Admitted, 130; dismissed, 130; died, 3.

Women, — Admitted, 126; dismissed, 114; died, 4.

Children, — Admitted, 88 ; dismissed, 97 ; died, 3.

St. Andrew’s Cottage for Invalid Ladies contains 10 beds.

Almshouses for 12 poor men or women have just been
built, not quite finished.

St. Stephen’s Mission School for very poor, also the schools
for the middle class, are full.

The Mission Temporary Chapel is well attended by the
poor. We have much cause to thank God for what He
enables us to do in this Mission with very small means.

The Sisterhood has grown in numbers and increased its
works external to Clewer — in Oxford, London, Devonshire,
and Folkestone.

We have constant demands to send Sisters to undertake
fresh works both at home and abroad, but have to refuse, as
we are hardly sufficient in numbers for the works we have
undertaken.

The call to send Sisters to foreign missions is very urgent.
Are there none of the women of England you can urge to
come and respond to this call.

II. Monsell.

Nov. 6, 1869.

APPENDIX Y.

"Wantage Vicarage,
Nov. 10, 1869.

The female work at Wantage is not merely penitentiary,
but also educational and pastoral. We are making an effort
to enlist certificated mistresses as Sisters, and to get cer-
tificates for some wdio are already Sisters, so as to bring,
if it please God to prosper our efforts, a staff of trained and

certificated Sisters to work in the Schools of the Church.
It seems to me that this ought to be the fortress which the
Church should erect against secular education. Practically
it is the stay of Christianity in France and Germany. The
Sisters of various orders obtain their brevets, and thus are
eligible for the charge of the Schools, which the Government
supplies with funds merely for their secular work.

I enclose a copy of our last Report, from which you will
see that the Sisters have considerably extended their opera-
tions. They have five houses, — two here, one of which is
penitentiary, the other educational ; one at Lostwithiel,
penitentiary ; another at Beaminster, penitentiary ; another
in Plymouth, for visiting, &c.

W. Butler.

A CHARGE

DELIVERED TO

THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD,

Pis SiHjj lEsiDfiuir,

NOVEMBER , 1863,

SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,

LORD HIGH ALMONER TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, AND CHANCELLOR
OF THE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

Published at the request of the Clergy and Laity,

#*fodr anir fjjnbon :

JOHN HENRY and JAMES PARKER.

1863.

frfoltb 6g JJarher, (tonmarluf, tfxfwft.

% fit.

fjpo many of you, my Brethren, I know that this
triennial gathering of our Diocese comes round with
a deep solemnity of aspect. It brings forcibly before
you the flow of time, the approaching end of life, the
work done or unaccomplished, the final reckoning, and
the great account. You look with deepened interest
not only abroad upon the wide field of the Church’s
work or the nation’s progress, but also, as loving hearts
will ever do, with special anxiety and hope on the
interests of our own Diocese, on our growth or
standing still in love and prayer and service ; and
as you gaze, you long to see more and more of the
doing of God’s work simply and earnestly amongst
us, and are ready to break out into the aspiration of
the holy Psalmist of old, “ Oh, pray for the peace
of Jerusalem : they shall prosper that love Thee.”

I rejoice to know that many of your hearts to-day
vibrate with these emotions ; and yet I believe it to
be inseparable from the nature of the Bishop’s office
that these thoughts should, with even a concentration
of feeling of which others are incapable, possess him
who holds it, when at these recurring intervals he
again meets the Diocese with the oversight of which
he has been set in charge by the Lord.

b 2

Certainly each recurrence of these meetings has
deepened such feelings in me. The greater know-
ledge which time gives me of the Diocese, my better
acquaintance with its Clergy and Laity, my largely
increased affection for so many of them ; the gaps
made in their ranks by death ; the disappearing from
amongst us of honoured and beloved faces — (twenty-
eight of our incumbents gone since last we met) ; — the
more detailed knowledge which I have of the difficul-
ties and disappointments, as well as of the successes
and blessings of our common ministry ; an increasing
sense of personal imperfection, and a growing ex-
pectation of the end of my ministry, — all deepen
greatly the broad lines of care, anxiety, and solemn
reflection with which season after season I meet you,
and pray and consult with you, as I do here this day.
May He, who only can, make these meetings and
these thoughts really profitable to us.

I propose to-day to do as I have done before, and
take first with you a survey of our own Diocese and
of the leading works of the Church within it for the
last three years.

During that time, then, there have been confirmed
in the Diocese 8,519 males and 10,051 females, (one-
tenth of our whole population between the ages of
15 and 18,) at 225 Confirmations spread through
our three counties, 79 having been held in Oxford-
shire, 79 in Buckinghamshire, and 67 in Berkshire;
being an increase, in all, of eight Confirmations above
those of the three preceding years. Twice in these
three years, during my Confirmations, my own hands

have been stayed by illness, and my brethren in the
Apostolic office have filled up my enforced lack of
service.

Again, I may notice an advance towards equality
in the relative number of the male to the female
candidates ; a great token in my judgment, at least in
parishes which are well worked, of the successful
labours of the parish priest. In my earlier Confirma-
tions the proportion throughout the Diocese averaged
two males to three females, whereas in these last
three years it has risen as near to equality as four
and a-half to five. This external indication of pro-
gress is confirmed, I rejoice to say, by my observation
of the remarkable improvement in the manner and
bearing of the confirmed.

Once more, I would earnestly press on parents and
god-parents the duty and the blessedness of making
Confirmation a real spiritual era in the opening life of
the younger people. A word spoken at such a season,
how good is it ! The mere attendance of the god-
parents with the young at their Confirmation is itself
invaluable ; and who can limit the blessings which
their prayers for them may at such a time draw down ?
I, for my part, shall grudge no personal labour in-
volved in multiplying my Confirmations to meet such
efforts of yours.

From the Confirmations I turn to the Ordinations
of the Diocese. And here it is with deep thankful-
ness that I am able to say that through the last three
years I have noticed the increase of a more general
seriousness of tone amongst the candidates. There

have, too, been marks of better and more careful pre-
paration for the examinations than of old. On two
essential points, without which I can ordain none, —
I mean a competent knowledge of God’s Word and
of our Book of Common Prayer, — this has been espe-
cially the case. So much has been said of late of
the diminution of the numbers of regularly educated
candidates for Orders, that I am glad to be able to
record that this complaint is not confirmed by my
experience. Since my consecration in 1845, I have
ordained 911 deacons and 793 priests. Of this num-
ber very few have been Literates, and these have been
spread very equally over the whole eighteen years.
During the first three years of my episcopate the
deacons ordained amounted to 123, and the priests
to 116. During the last three years the deacons
have been 133, and the priests 131. There are, it is
true, many causes at work tending to prevent young
men from entering as freely as heretofore into the
ministry of our Church. Such are, in my judgment,
the multitude of new openings to official and profes-
sional life ; the vast activity of commerce and its
large returns contrasted with the exceeding poverty
of the clerical profession ; the free admission of laymen
to college fellowships ; and the disturbance of long-
settled religious opinions. Some effect, doubtless, such
causes must have produced : I can only rejoice that
they have not as yet diminished in any appreciable
degree the number of candidates of our own Diocese.
Perhaps this may partly be the reason why I cannot
enter into the desponding feelings with which some

have spoken on this subject. If the standard of our
Church’s love and faith is maintained high and pure,
we shall not, I am persuaded, lack candidates for
her ministry of the right sort. The more abounding
temptations of the world, its larger bribes of riches
and luxuries, will draw off some who would have
joined us : but we can bear the loss of such. If our
heavenly doctrines are but held with clear uncom-
promising firmness, we need not fear to tell men that
they must give up much for the love of Christ, and
for the blessedness of serving directly under such
a Master. If they believe in the gifts of Ordination,
in the reality of their commission and the certainty
of their reward, there will still be those whom that
voice which of old reached Matthew the Publican,
and James and John and Peter the fishermen, will
call from full nets and seats of custom to leave all
and follow Him. And so, I doubt not, it will be
with us.

Still, the existence of such a danger, even if it
has been over-rated, enforces on us the duty of using
all lawful means to raise our small endowments, and
even more, to provide every possible assistance to
help men whose hearts are drawn towards the
ministry by the love of souls and of Christ in pre-
paring themselves for this blessed work.

Such assistance I believe our Diocesan Colleges are
well calculated to afford. Their identification with the
Diocese in which they are situated has a direct ten-
dency to qualify what might otherwise be the too
great personal influence of the Principal. For the

Diocesan character which pervades them prevents
their sinking into mere machines for reproducing the
peculiarities of thought or conduct of a single mind.

Of our own Diocesan seminary I can now speak
after three more years’ experience of its work ; and
that added experience has increased my belief in its
importance.

Few boons to the Church can be greater than to
find out and to prepare for her service those whom
God is secretly drawing to the ministry of His Word
and Sacraments. Thus is to be fulfilled amongst us
that which, under prophetic impulse, Elijah did when
amongst the teams of ploughing oxen he cast his gar-
ment upon Elisha the son of Shaphan, and gave to
idolatrous Israel that ministry of living fire. The
training, too, afforded by such a College, as I have seen
it in action under my own eye, is invaluable. Whether,
as is the normal condition, its course follows the Uni-
versity career, or whether, as I have allowed in some
exceptional instances, it takes up a life formed in some
other profession to active labour, it appears to me to
give exactly that which for most young clergymen our
system has lacked, both for raising to its highest tone
the life of those who are already imbued with the true
spirit of Christ’s messengers, and for arousing those
who would otherwise have entered the ministry with
the dulness of mere professional respectability. The
direction, too, which it affords as to the special matters
to be studied, and the order and purpose of studying
them, is, in so wide and undetermined a field as the-
ology, an assistance of the utmost value to young

students, saving their time and systematizing their
acquirements, and so sharpening their industry by
making them feel its effects. And yet this is its least
advantage. The raising of the moral tone ; the form-
ing, before they have to act upon it, the clerical cha-
racter, first by encouraging for a time the concentra-
tion of thought upon its duties, its responsibilities, and
its rewards, and next by the reciprocal influence, both
received and imparted, which equals in age and sharers
in a common life, with common objects and pursuits,
infallibly exert upon each other ; the tempering by
such a training extreme tendencies on all sides, and
so forming the future clergy to be true, loving, dutiful,
and modest sons of the Church of England ; above
all, the aiding the development of the spiritual charac-
ter by common prayers, by frequent communions, by
a certain amount of withdrawal from old companions
and old habits, and by the atmosphere of holy living
which is shed around them from those who give their
lives to the work of forming Christ’s ministers for His
service ; — these are, in my judgment, the great results
which, under God’s blessing, such Colleges are calcu-
lated to yield us.

In our own College, the three years’ period over
which our retrospect especially extends has been
marked by some peculiar features. Amongst these
I must give the chief place to the loss of its late
Principal, the Rev. Henry Hutchinson Swinny. Short
as had been his presidency there, it had been long
enough to make generally known and felt, through-
out the Diocese and beyond it, what he was and what

he was doing for his Lord. There was in him a rare
mixture of great qualities, forming a character most
singularly fitted for the efficient discharge of the pecu-
liar duties of his office. There was in him a noble-
ness of spirit which no one who approached him could
fail to appreciate : it really seemed as if a low thought
could not harbour in his mind. And linked as this
was to a true and tender sympathy with every one who
came within his sphere, he could not but acquire over
them an almost boundless influence. That influence
was ever used, with a rare singleness of purpose and
of act, to lead them on in that path of increasing saint-
liness along which he was himself advancing. In that
great gift of continual advance lay, I believe, the
secret of his strength in raising others. No one could
live with him without marking this blessed progress.
His growth in all the habits of devotion ; the increasing
singleness of his always single eye ; the deepening of
that master-love to Christ which had long been the
mainspring of his life ; the more entire triumph of the
exalting spirit over pain and weariness, and weakness
of the body, — these were evidences open to every eye
of the ripening work of the Blessed Spirit in His
servant’s soul. His death was worthy of his life, and
its circumstances, though painfully startling to others,
what he himself had even desired. The College work,
to which he gave himself with so signal a devotion,
was, for the Term, completed. One by one almost
every departing student had received his last word
of loving counsel ; the hand of the very last was
actually clasped in his, and the closing adieu was

being given, when it was changed by the great Master
of life and death into the long farewell, which was
to reach on till the resurrection morning ; and he
sank down like a weary man whose appointed task
was well completed, and slept in Jesus. “ Blessed
is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh,
shall find so doing.”

I need not tell you of the sadness of separation which
accompanied even so blessed a death. Many of you
know how his widow and his children, and the College,
and his friends wept for their dead : nor need I say any-
thing to you of the great anxiety of appointing his suc-
cessor. He who has been chosen is one like-minded
with him who has entered on his rest : one who had
worked with him in life ; and who, taking up the fallen
mantle of the former prophet, set at once, in the same
strength, to continue and to complete his work. May
it be with him — join me, brethren, in the prayer — as
with the younger prophet of Israel ! May a double
portion of the spirit of Elijah descend upon the head
of Elisha ! For the rest, the Vice-Principal — to whom
how much we owe few outside the College walls can
conceive, for pure religion, sound learning, wise dis-
cretion, conscientious labour, and solid results — con-
tinues at his post; and our staff has been strengthened
by the great addition of the Rev. James Russell Wood-
ford as our Professor of Moral Theology.

During the last three years 41 students have been
admitted to the College. The average attendance has
been, in 1861, 12; in 1862, 14; in 1863, 19; shew-
ing a steady increase of numbers, the average of 1859

and 1860 having been 11. At present the College
is quite full, the numbers in residence amounting
to 22. Besides the actual students, many old stu-
dents and some few visitors have resided in college
a Term or part of a Term in preparation for Priests’
Orders.

The number of students ordained during the last
three years is 30, of whom 22 were ordained for Ox-
ford Diocese. The remaining 8 were ordained by the
following Bishops London, 2 ; Salisbury, 1; York, J ;
Winchester, 1 ; Lichfield, 1 ; Lincoln, 1 ; Durham, 1.
The number of students, past or present, is 163.

Once again, I earnestly commend this College to
your sympathy and prayers. The periodical gather-
ing of its old students shews year by year how widely
its influence is extending ; and their work in many
dioceses manifests a growing tradition of that loving
earnest quietness in labour which these times so pre-
eminently need. May the blessing of the Lord the
Spirit rest abundantly upon it, and make it to be
indeed mighty for His work amongst the schools of
the prophets !

Through the kind support both of bishops and
clergymen, I have been able to continue through
these three years, I trust with some marked profit,
our usual Lenten Services, especially at Oxford ; and
we have, too, maintained that system of missions to
some centres of the diocese with the working of
which most of you are familiar. These have been
held, in 1861 at Banbury, in 1862 at Aylesbury, in
1863 at Newbury.

I am far from considering our present plans for
the management of these Missions completely perfect.
I have marked some great advantages attending them,
and not overlooked some leading defects. Amongst
the main advantages have been, first, their manifest-
ing to our people, in a way few can avoid noticing,
the life and love with which our Church is instinct ;
secondly, the blessing which seems signally to have
attended the Holy Communions and the addresses
delivered at them, and the conferences of the clergy ;
I should place thirdly the great good which has re-
sulted from the earnest preaching of the Gospel ad-
dressed to large congregations through the country
parishes surrounding the mission centre.

The main additions which I desire to see made
to them are, first, the bringing those whose hearts
have been touched by the public services of the mis-
sion into closer personal relations with their clergy ;
and next, some well-considered plan for more effec-
tually reaching those many, alas ! almost heathen
who, living at our doors, enter no place of worship,
profess no faith in Christ, and often scarcely know
His name. How, as to this or any other points., we
may increase the benefits and lessen the defects of
these attempts to quicken the work of God in our
parishes, are questions on which I should most thank-
fully receive the suggestions of any amongst you, as
it will be the subject of anxious deliberation at our
next Cuddesdon Conferences.

Meanwhile, the reports made to me of the results
actually gained by our past Missions encourage me to

proceed with them. These results are enumerated
as “the converting occasional into regular attendants
on the public worship of God ; the addition of new
communicants ; the diminution, at least for the time,
of the evil of drinking a “drawing along of the whole
town, and forcing it to take some notice of God and
religion and “instances of the sick and the whole,
in after visitations of the parish, recurring to it as hav-
ing been a time of great blessedness to them, and this
borne out by visible changes of character in some spe-
cific and remarkable instances.” “ I believe,” writes
one in whose parish it was tried, “ the Mission was of
great use here. I would on no account have been de-
prived of the advantages of it. I am quite sure that
it has given the Church a standing which she will
hardly lose, and that it has been the bringing of
much good to many souls.”

In the important matter of the ordinary attendance of
our people on the public worship of God, your returns,
my Reverend Brethren, mark a considerable increase,
reaching from 131,352, your last, to 181,879, your
present return. In the frequency, too, of the celebra-
tions of the Holy Communion I mark with much thank-
fulness a considerable growth. At my last Visitation
the churches in which the celebrations were more fre-
quent than monthly and at the greater Festivals, were
only 45; they are now 81. Besides these 45, those
in which the celebrations were monthly and at the
greater Festivals (the least measure, I am persuaded,
which ought to satisfy any parish priest) were only
217, they are now 307 ; and many other parishes are

rising to the same level. From the paucity of carefully
kept lists of communicants I am unable to ascertain
their numbers. I earnestly request you, my Reverend
Brethren, universally to adopt the practice of keeping
as exact a list as possible of all who in the course of
the year attend the Holy Communion.

The Diocesan Societies have continued through
these three years their active labours. So far, indeed,
from having been able as .yet to complete their work,
it has seemed to grow under their hands.

This is especially the case as to our Diocesan Church
Building Society. For great as, thank God ! have
been the results of its labours in calling forth the gene-
rous aid of the diocese until many new houses of prayer
have been built, and throughout some deaneries the
work of restoring our great inheritance of old churches
has been well-nigh completed, yet still the demands
upon us increase rather than diminish. Never since
the foundation of the Society were our funds so en-
tirely exhausted and so many urgent claims pressing
for attention. A comparison of the action of the
Society in the last three years with the two similar
preceding periods will best exhibit the facts of the
case. In the three years ending in 1857, it had re-
ceived forty-five applications, had granted £2,725,
calling out from other sources £40,346 ; and by this
total expense of £43,071 had provided 424 appro-
priated and 3,767 unappropriated, or a total of 4,191
sittings in our churches. In the three next years, the
applications rose from forty-five to sixty-six, the
grants from £2,725 to £5,230, the sums called forth

from other sources, from £40,346 to £72,896, and
the total expended from £43,071 to £78,126.

During the last three years the help of the Society
has been given in no fewer than 62 cases a. In these,
10 new churches have been built, 4 have been re-

aEnoM November, I860, to August, 1863,* inclusive.

New Churches.

1. Hempton, Oxon.

2. Stantonbury, Bucks.

3. Toucher’s End, Berks.

4. St. Philip and St. James, Oxford.

5. Woodstock Union Chapel, Oxon.

6. Iver, Bucks.

7. St. John’s, Beading.

8. Chesham, Bucks.

9. Ascot Heath, Berks.

10. All Saints’, Reading.

11. Thatcham, Berks.

12. Reading, (St. Giles’ Parish).

Churches rebuilt.

1. Sliifford, Oxon.

2. Brightwalton, Berks.

3. Bourton, Oxon.

Parsonage Houses.

(. relinquished.

1. Stony Stratford, Bucks.

2. Milcombe, Oxon..

3. North Moreton, Berks.

4. St. Leonard’s,

Aston Clinton, > su°se(lue.ntlJ

5. Rams den, Oxon.

6. Baulking, Berks.

7. Hedsor, Bucks.

8. Clay don, Banbury.

9. Eawley, Berks.

10. Holywell, Oxford.

11. Edgcott, Bucks.

Churches Restored.

| 8. Haddenham, Bucks.

9. St. Ebbe’s, Oxford.

* 10. St. Aldate’s, Oxford.

11. Wexham, Bucks.

12 Stewkley, Bucks.

13. Wokingham, Berks.

14. Bicester, Oxon.

15. Great Coxwell, Berks.

16. Letcombe Bassett, Berks.

17. Waddesdon, Bucks.

18. Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks.

19. Soulbury, Bucks.

20. Heading-ton, Oxon.

21. Colnbrook, Bucks.

22. Swanbourne, Bucks.

23. Tackley, Oxon.

24. Cowley, Oxon.

25. Compton Parva, Berks.

26. Old Windsor, Berks.

27. Chinnor, Oxon.

28. Turweston, Oxon.

29. Westbury, Bucks.

30. St. Mary’s, Reading.

31. Monks Risborough.

32. Pitchcott, Bucks.

33. Bradenham, Bucks.

34. Lewknor, Oxon.

35. Burnham, Bucks.

36. Upper Heyford, Oxon.

New Churches . .12

Rebuilt ... 3

Restored . . .36

Parsonage Houses . 11

1. Cottesford, Oxon

2. Milton Keynes, Bucks.

3. Mars worth, Bucks.

4. Stratton Audley, Oxon.

5. Wraysbury, Bucks.

6. Ilulcott, Bucks.

7. Denham, Bucks.

C Oxon. .
Objects in < Berks.

(. Bucks.

built, 39 have been restored, and 1 1 parsonage-houses
have been provided. The sum granted by the So-
ciety in these cases amounted to £5,535, and this
has been in great measure the means of arousing
efforts which have drawn from other sources £98,546 ;
so that altogether not less than £104,081 has in
these three years been spent upon our churches, by
which 7,250 new places, all but 236 of which are
free, have been provided for worshippers in God’s
House, and the spiritual condition of a population
amounting in the aggregate to 72,629 has been ma-
terially amended.

As to this and our other Diocesan Societies, let me
entreat the aid of the Laity and of the Clergy to
enable them to continue their good works. Death
and removal are always thinning the subscription
lists of our old Societies, and unless great efforts are
incessantly made, their funds must fall off. Once
more, I would ask it as a special kindness from the
Clergy, that they would arrange to preach and collect
once annually for these great sinews of our diocesan
work. If every parish, however small its resources,
were thus stirred up to make its own contributions,
we might gladden many a waiting heart, and of God’s
mercy save many a precious soul.

Of the Spiritual Help Society, I might repeat what
I have said of its sister institution. Much has been
done by it, but the necessities of the Diocese clamour
for more. During the year 1861, it furnished the
means by which, with the local assistance which the
grant called forth, 37 additional Clergymen were pro-

vided for the parishes most pressingly in need of such
aid; 34 were in like manner supplied in 1862 ; and
35 in 1863. But the Society is using up the dona-
tions which were funded at its formation, and unless
it receives increased support, instead of meeting more
of the many claims of the Diocese, it must narrow
its present field of usefulness. How great a loss this
would prove may be read in such letters as the fol-
lowing, from an Incumbent who had received a grant
since Feb. 1858, and who “can trace a marked in-
crease in attachment to the Church, as shewn by
large attendance at the Services, and specially at the
Holy Communion —

“ I may mention, he adds, that at the Confirmation
in Lent, last year, the number of candidates was 227,
being larger by more than 100 than at any previous
Confirmation.

“ The number of Communicants on our list is now
550. It was not more than 250 when the grant was
first made.5’

But of all our Diocesan Societies, the youngest is
that for which at this moment I would pre-eminently
ask the aid of every Layman and Clergyman in the
Diocese. It was founded immediately after my last
Visitation of the Diocese, for the purpose of aug-
menting its small livings. The need of such augment-
ation is indeed great. The endowment of at least
223 of our parishes falls below £200 a-year, and that
of 72 parishes is below £100. If the various calls
upon the Clergy of these parishes were fully esti-
mated, it would, I believe, be found that they received

less than an ordinary skilled labourer ; and if the
interest on the money laid out in their education be
further reckoned, I believe that their professional
receipts would be found to be nothing.

For the sake of all, this ought not to be. “ The
labourer is worthy of his hire.” The mind and ener-
gies of many a good man amongst us are cramped
and weakened by tbe heavy pressure of the anxieties
which spring from this cause ; and in the long run
the extreme poverty of the remuneration of the
Clergy must tell with a disastrous influence on their
position in society, and on their future supply. It is,
then, for the interest of all that this evil should be
abated. To abate it in the worst and extremest cases
amongst us is the intention of this Society.

One principal purpose of its foundation was to meet,
on behalf of poor livings, grants offered by the Ec-
clesiastical Commissioners, who have been able for
some years (besides free grants to extreme cases) to
set apart £100,000 a-year to meet equal benefactions
for poor parishes. In most cases these destitute
places can do little for themselves, and this association
was formed to aid them in making the offer which
would secure the Commissioners’ grant. I thankfully
acknowledge the answer made to my first appeal in
this matter. In the Rev. Charles Dasliwood Goldie
I found one who added to large and almost gratuitous
pastoral exertions, wholly unpaid efforts carried on
with untiring energy and zeal in behalf of this Society.

In the first year £2,000 was given to the work,
and the offers for 18 of the poorer livings being

c 2

accepted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, £400
a-year for ever was divided amongst them as the
result of £1,600 given by the Society.

In the second year the subscriptions to the Society
were well maintained ; but as they amounted only to
£550 per annum, including £50 the munificent annual
subscription of her Majesty the Queen, the whole
sum we were able to grant was, through the diminu-
tion of donations, only £1,000. This was divided
through 14 parishes, most of which secured from
the Commissioners the doubling of their offered
augmentation.

It will not be without great efforts that we shall
be able to maintain the average of our second year ;
but, considering the greatness of the need, and the
present opportunity of relieving it through the aid
of the Commissioners, I earnestly ask from those to
whom God has given the means of rendering it, their
hearty assistance in the work.

The work of Church Education has been steadily
advancing amongst us during these last three years.
Our Diocesan inspection now embraces about three-
fourths of our parishes. In the Archdeaconry of
Buckingham at least 20 parishes have been added
in the present year to the lists of our Inspectors.
To these unpaid and invaluable labourers who carry
out the work of inspection, let me once more thus
publicly convey my own thanks and those of the
whole Diocese. The number of Schools inspected
have been, in Oxfordshire 202, of which 104 were
mixed Schools ; in Berkshire 1 90, 92 being mixed ;

in Buckinghamshire 176, of which 102 were mixed.
The numbers of scholars in these Schools appear to be
19,230 boys, and 17,960 girls, 37,190 in all; a con-
siderable increase on the numbers last reported.
Roughly stated, the difference in the last three years
amounts to 37,000 children in 568 schools against

31.000 in 505 Schools.

In all our Church Schools, so far as we possess the
data necessary for the calculation, it would appear
that there are under daily education, in Oxfordshire
llj per cent, of the population, in Buckinghamshire
10J per cent., and in Berkshire 8f per cent.

To these numbers, to make them accurate, should
be added those of our Night School scholars. But
these returns are not sufficiently complete to he safely
used. In Buckinghamshire alone, those we have re-
ceived would add 2 per cent, to our estimate of the
number under our training.

A different estimate marks with curious exactness
where is at present the great deficiency.

In Oxfordshire, 7 towns with a population of 43,500
give a return of only 9 per cent, in our Day Schools ;
whilst in our country parishes around these a popu-
lation of 61,500 gives an average of scholars rising to
13 per cent. The same difference may be traced in
the other two counties of the Diocese. In Berkshire
the per centage from 15 towns with a population of

90.000 is only 7, wThilst in the neighbouring coun-
try parishes with a population of 71,000 it is lOf
per cent. ; and in Buckinghamshire, in 13 towns
with a population of 49,500 it is 8|, whilst in the

country parishes with a population of 57,500 it rises
to 12 per cent.

It is, then, plainly amongst our town populations
especially that we need fresh exertions to bring the
children under the training of the Church. It is true
that in these towns many children from attending
private Schools really are, though they are not enu-
merated, under the training of the Church. But even
allowing for this, there remains a large relative de-
ficiency. It has been suggested to me by one well
qualified to judge, that the multiplication of Church
Infant Schools would be the most effective way of
feeding in towns the Schools for elder children.

In these three years we have been able to grant
towards the expense of erecting 43 new Schools £935,
and £45 in book grants to increase the efficiency of
Schools already existing. But it is not only by collect-
ing and administering these funds for building new
and perfecting old Schools, that the Diocesan Board
of Education has been rendering good service to the
great cause of Church teaching. It has also enabled
the Diocese to keep a careful watch upon the move-
ments of the Privy Council on this important subject.
On these movements I will only say here that I can-
not doubt that they prove that there exists in some
quarters a settled desire to break down in detail,
wherever it is possible, the distinctiveness of the
Church’s teaching in our Schools through the ad-
ministration of the sums granted for education by
Parliament. Our strength for resisting these attempts
must mainly depend upon our acting steadily together,

and bringing calmly but distinctly forward every at-
tempt made to enforce on the founders or managers
of Schools the adoption of clauses in their trust deeds
which are inconsistent with securing that true Church
teaching which we by our very profession as Church-
men guarantee to parents who entrust to us their
children.

One principal change in the administration of the
sums voted by Parliament affects the mode in which
the Training Colleges are in future to be aided from
the grant. This help is hereafter to be graduated not
merely according to the proficiency of the pupils, but
is to be paid only when they have for a certain season
efficiently discharged as masters or mistresses the
teacher’s office. Of this arrangement, if only the
transition from the former to the present system is
fairly conducted, we have, I think, no reason to com-
plain. The administrators of money voted by Parlia-
ment for specific objects are bound to see that it is
spent on those objects, and it is for the formation
of school teachers that these grants were made and
should be alone used. Our own Diocesan Training
College has certainly fulfilled its engagements herein,
and ought not therefore to lose under any new mode
of administering the public fund adopted to secure
this result. The total number of students who have
passed through our College has been 282, of whom
seven have died, five left the vocation, and eight were
withdrawn as mentally or morally disqualified ; of
two more we have no certain knowledge, whilst 260
are acting as teachers, 257 of whom are believed at

this time to hold certificates. At present we have
80 pupils resident in the College, the intellectual,
moral, and religious tone of which is, I believe, fully
maintained. There is, indeed, but one ground for
anxiety as to the College, and that is, whether its
expences can be adequately provided for under the
new rules of the Privy Council. I will not forecast
so great an evil as that the Church should be forced
by lack of funds to give up the due training of the
teachers of her youth. This were, indeed, at once
a shameful discredit and an irreparable loss. All
experience daily shews us that the results of our
Schools depend as much on how as on what the
children are taught. A clear, loving, reverential
spirit in the teacher is a condition of success second
only to the right teaching of the fundamentals of
the faith, and for such teachers as a rule we shall
look in vain unless the Church has patiently prepared
them for their work.

All the other great institutions of the Diocese are,
I trust, advancing with steady perseverance in their
work for God. At Oxford, Wantage, and Clewer,
the Sisterhoods of which I spoke to you in my last
Charge persevere patiently and lovingly in their evan-
gelic labours for bringing sinners to repentance. The
Clewer Sisterhood has largely increased both its fields
and departments of service. It is now labouring
amongst the poor of London, and in other dioceses
under their several bishops. To the great question,
asked somewhat anxiously at first, whether the Church
of England could maintain and direct the zeal and

common life of such institutions, a sufficient answer
seems now to be practically given in the loyalty, quiet-
ness, holiness, love, and labours of those who live in
them. May the continued blessing of God rest richly
upon them, and upon those who in them serve Him
and bless their brethren !

Here, then, we may pause in the survey of work
actually done in our own Diocese, and draw for our-
selves our general conclusions. My own feeling is
one of deep thankfulness for the mercies vouchsafed
to us.

We have, through God’s grace, done something.
His work has not wholly stood still in our hands.
There is, I firmly believe, more of the internal life of
devotion amongst us than there was even at a com-
paratively recent period ; there is, I am sure, a rare
harmony and brotherly concord. This is, indeed,
a marked feature of the Diocese, both amongst our
Clergy and our Laity. To many of the Laymen, and
especially of the Churchwardens of the Diocese, I
would tender here our united thanks for their hearty
co-operation and aid during the last three years. We
rejoice to acknowledge how greatly you have helped
us in our restoration of churches, in our common
and more special Services, at our times of Confirma-
tion, and in all our plans for strengthening our
Church in performing her appointed work. There is
scarcely anywhere, thank God ! a note of discord.

And this union with our brethren of the Laity is
in great measure, I am persuaded, a fruit of the in-
creasing union which has grown up amongst our-

selves of the Clergy. Clergymen who have come
amongst ns from working elsewhere have frequently
borne witness to its striking presence. There is
amongst us a wide-spread sense of our true unity,
of our being “ one body in Christ, and every one
members one of another.” Assuredly this is a gift of
the Spirit of peace, a fruit and a witness of His in-
dwelling, a pledge of His working with us, and there-
fore of our success in the great trust committed to
our hands. May He knit us into a still closer band
of brotherhood, and melt any hearts which yet harshly
or sourly separate themselves from their brethren !

I trace this growth in unity first to the continued
action through the Diocese of our ruridecanal Chap-
ters, both of the Clergy, and of the Clergy in some
Deaneries once in the year with the aid of Lay Con-
sultees. I believe that the union and the life of each
Deanery will be found to be in exact proportion to
the regularity and the vigour of these meetings. To
the Rural Deans who hold them, I return my most
grateful thanks. The days which they and the School
Inspectors give me annually at Cuddesdon are to me
amongst the happiest of the year, and always send me
hack with renewed energy to my proper work.

Another great instrument by which this concord
has been attained has now been employed amongst us
for the last four yearS.

At the annual gathering of which I have just
spoken, of the Archdeacons and Rural Deans at
Cuddesdon, for Communion, prayer, and consultation,
held in 1860, in answer to the great question, “ how

may we of the Clergy increase holy living amongst
ourselves,” two plans were, as I mentioned in my last
Charge, suggested for trial. The first was, that such
of the Clergy of the Diocese as chose to come, should
be invited annually to meet together, for Communion,
worship, brotherly intercourse, and addresses upon
some leading questions of theology, to be followed
by free discussion of the subjects so opened.

The first two of these gatherings were held at
St. Peter’s College, Radley ; the last two at Exeter
College, Oxford. Through the exceeding kindness
of the College authorities, every difficulty as to their
management has been removed. Large numbers have
availed themselves of the opportunity thus afforded
them of meeting their brethren, communicating with
them in the blessed Sacrament of the Lord’s Body
and Blood, hearing with them the good Word of God,
and taking counsel together upon the work of the
holy ministry. I believe that every one who has at-
tended those meetings has felt that it was good for
him to have been there ; that he has returned cheered,
animated, quickened, with a new sense of living com-
munion with his brethren, strong in his soul, and
braced up to begin with renewed vigour his parochial
labours. For the successful working of this scheme

the Diocese is mainlv indebted to the Rev. W. Fre-
%/

mantle, who has spared no labour or thought, or cost
or patience, in bringing it to perfection.

“ I have received,” Mr. Fremantle writes to me,
“ during the last four years some communication on
the subject from almost every Clergyman in the Dio-

cese ; and with the exception of two or three, not
one word of objection or dissatisfaction. On the other
hand, the letters universally express the great enjoy-
ment which the Clergy have had. The attendance has
been steadily increasing. At the first meeting about
100 were present ; at the second, in 1861, about 200 ;
at the third, in 1862, more than 100, the meeting of
the Church Congress, which immediately preceded it,
having thinned its numbers ; but at the fourth meet-
ing, in the present year, 250 attended. The addresses
and sermons at these meetings will speak for them-
selves.” A few copies of the earlier reports remain,
the sale of which would relieve our Secretary of all
debt. Besides these, there have been in the evenings
free discussions, which have not been recorded, but
which by their perfect freedom and kindliness have
tended to cheer and enlighten many. I may leave
this matter with words which I wrote in an intro-
duction to one of these volumes : “ Let me once more
express my humble gratitude to Almighty God for
the remarkable unity which He has vouchsafed to us ;
a unity most alien from the calm of stagnation ; one
full of life, full of love to our common Lord, and of
vigorous action for Him.”

The other plan suggested for quickening the life
of God within ourselves has also been tried each year
in various centres of the Diocese. Here smaller num-
bers have met to spend one, two, or three days toge-
ther, communicating each morning, and through the
day hearing a course of addresses on the inner spi-
ritual life from one of the brethren, and then retiring

for meditation, self-examination, and prayer. None, I
think, who have not had experience of it can conceive
how great and lasting an assistance they may obtain
in holy living from thus taking to themselves the
merciful invitation of our Lord to His first disciples,
“ Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile.” These
times of silence, of listening, of meditation, of prayer,
and of Communion leave behind them in the working
days which follow them a blessed fragrance which is
like the breath of myrrh in the bundle of life.

It is by thus quickening God’s work within our-
selves that we can best spread it around us. What
we live and are before our parishes, that some at least
in them will, through God’s grace working even by
our weakness, become. Such a blessing, at least
in some measure, has been vouchsafed to many of
you, my Reverend Brethren. Let us with all humble
thankfulness acknowledge this great mercy ; and let
us return from this our triennial gathering, and from
the retrospect of what God has of His goodness
wrought amongst us, to our several spheres of la-
bour cheered and animated to new efforts, that the
ministry of Christ in our hands may increasingly
become a praise in the earth.

I have studied, my Reverend Brethren, with careful
attention your statements of “the hindrances” which
have impeded your ministry ; and as to one or two
of the chiefest of them I would give you a few words
of counsel.

The “ hindrance ” named by you the most fre-
quently is the evil working of beer-shops, and the

unfitness of cottages for the family life of the labour-
ing poor.

These are, no doubt, grievous hindrances. Drunken-
ness as the fruit of the one, and impurity as the effect
of the other, stand sorely in our way : and every effort
we can make to awaken the Legislature to reform the
one, and the owners of the soil to abate the other,
will be well bestowed.

The next “ hindrance” most frequently named by
you is one of a wholly different class, and assails the
spiritual authority of our office. It is “ the presence of
dissent” in your parishes. The numbers of the sepa-
ratists are often said by you to be small, but you find
them weaken your ministerial influence and disturb
the minds of your flock. This seems to me to point
out one main cause of the “hindrance” and where
we are to find its remedy. We want more distinctive
Church teaching for our own people. We believe
that we do possess, as we cannot see that others do,
Christ’s direct commission for our ministry, and a cer-
tainty and fulness therefore of His Presence and of
His Sacramental working which, to say the least,
may be lacking elsewhere. If we do not hold as
much as this, we must dissent from the plain language
of our own Ordination Service ; and if we do, we must
teach as well as live as those who are possessed by this
belief. We need not be contentious : God forbid that
we should be uncharitable in our mode of stating the
truth according to the principles of our own Church ;
but the truth we must state. We have no right to
withhold it from adults ; or to send out children from

our schools unfurnished with sound principles on this
any more than on other religious subjects. These
children are quite sure to meet with contrary preten-
sions, and how can we expect them to be discrimi-
nating and stedfast unless we have taught them on
these as well as on other matters the whole truth
of God. Depend upon it, a thoroughly distinctive
teaching of our own doctrines, free from all attack
on others, is to be here our people’s safeguard.

From a few parts of the Diocese several replies
have mentioned the existence of another “ hindrance,”
in the intrusion of neighbouring Clergy, sometimes to
hold religious meetings, and sometimes to organize
religious societies, in the parishes committed to their
charge.

Upon this subject, brought thus officially before me,
I must say a few words : to which I would especially
invite the attention not only of the Clergy, but also of
the Churchwardens of the parishes, as the special
guardians of their orderly peacefulness. Such intru-
sions, then, I hold to be entirely contrary to our
Church’s rule, and full of mischief in their conse-
quences. They are contrary to our Church’s rule.
For she has divided each Diocese into several parishes,
and directed the Bishop, in whom is lodged the spi-
ritual charge of the whole, to commit the cure and
government of the souls of the parishioners of each
parish under himself to its own priest. This having
been once done, she guards, so far as human laws can
reach, the parish priest to whom this trust has been
committed from all interference of his brother Clergy-

men with its discharge. The Bishop, of course, as
the chief pastor of the whole Diocese, retains the
right of officiating at his own will in every parish ;
but if without the consent of the parish priest any
brother Clergyman performs any directly ministerial
act in the parish of another, he is liable to suspen-
sion from the ministry. Here is the Church’s rule.
Surely, then, it is evident that any Clergyman coming
into such a separated district for those mixed acts of
religious teaching and prayer which accompany meet-
ings for religious purposes, is guilty of a real breach of
her rule, even though he contrives to avoid that tech-
nical transgression of the law which would make him
liable to punishment. For he cannot cast off at will
his ministerial character, and so, whether he intends
it or no, what he does in his neighbour’s parish he
does morally and practically as an intrusive minister.
A mistaken zeal may suggest that such a course may
be justified by the good it will do ; but no amount of
good can justify a breach of even implied contracts ;
and here there is something more than this. Such
conduct, moreover, is eminently unbrotherly, and a
plain violation, therefore, of the Divine command of
doing unto others as we would they should do to us ;
for those who thus interfere with their neighbour’s
work would generally be amongst the first to resent
any interference with their own. This practice, there-
fore, appears to me to be as wrong as I am certain
that it is mischievous. For it tends directly to break
up the parochial system ; to weaken the hands of the
appointed parish priest, and in his person to dishonour

the common ministry which we have received of the
Lord ; to sow the seeds of strife and suspicion ; and to
be at direct variance with His mind who is the Author
not of confusion but of order in all the Churches.

I affectionately entreat any who have been led into
the course I condemn, to weigh in the presence of
God these reasons for its condemnation which, as their
Bishop, in the face of the Diocese, I desire with all
distinctness of utterance to urge upon them.

Another “ hindrance” to the ministry, mentioned not
unfrequently, is the want of greater lay co-operation
and support. As to this I would commend to your
most serious attention a single suggestion. There is
no doubt, my Reverend Brethren, that in too many of
our parishes we do stand far too much alone in our
work ; and that what above all other outward aids
we need is the enlisting more of the resident Laity
as our advisers and active assistants. Now the system
of our Church provides a means of securing this,
which has been suffered for the most part to become
obsolete, but which may, I believe, with the greatest
advantage be restored to active operation.

The 90th Canon directs that, besides the Church-
wardens, “ two or three discreet persons in every par-
ish should be chosen for Sides-men, or Assistants, by
the Minister and Parishioners if they can agree, other-
wise to be appointed by the Ordinary of the Diocese
yearly in Easter- week.” The duties indicated for such
Sides-men are exactly those for the efficient discharge
of which we especially need the aid of our brethren.
They are such as, “ seeing that all the parishioners

duly resort to their church upon all Sundays and
Holydays, earnestly calling upon and monishing those
who are slack and negligent;” and, finally, “present-
ing” the obdurate.

If that safe amount of discipline within our own
Church which all good and thoughtful men long for
is ever to be restored amongst us, it must begin in
these first steps of our parochial life ; and as a pre-
paration for that, as well as at once to secure the
active lay co-operation which alike blesses the Laity
who give and the Clergy who receive it, I would urge
upon you the general restoration through the Diocese
in the approaching Easter- week of the office of the
Sides- men.

On one other matter, brought before me by a Lay-
man of the Diocese, I have a word to say to you.

I am told that there is a widespread neglect of the
rubric which enjoins that the Curate shall “ declare
unto the people what Holydays or fasting-days are in
the week following to be observed.” This, wherever
it has been so, I must officially request you to correct.
The matter may seem slight to some of you; but dis-
obedience to lawful commands is never unimportant,
and the easier the act of obedience the more wilful is
its neglect. But besides this, our Reformers acted, I
am persuaded, upon sound reasons when, striking out
the multitude of holydays which had overlaid the year,
they thus retained in our Calendar the remembrance
especially of the Evangelists and Apostles of the Lord.
Eor these great stars, which gem the Church’s firma-
ment as it sweeps in its annual revolution over us,

mark the passing year with Christian memories, sug-
gesting through His followers the remembrance of
their Lord and ours, and forming practically a living
out-work of the weekly remembrance of His resur-
rection. For uniformity, I would suggest to you as
the best mode of giving the notice which the rubric
requires you to give, the simple statement “ That such
a day is the feast of such a Saint,” adding the notice
of any service which you may intend to hold upon it.

The rule (well known, doubtless, to most of you) is,
that if such a Saint’s day falls upon a Sunday, the
Collect of the Saint’s day is always to be said with
that of the Sunday, but the Epistle and Gospel of the
Saint’s day are not to supersede those appointed for
the Sunday, if it be one which marks any special sea-
son of the Christian year.

And now I will ask you to turn with me for
a little while to the wider circle of the Church around
us, from which influences for good or for evil are per-
petually pouring in upon us in our own work.

Now in our first glance at this chequered scene
we must, I think, be struck at once by the presence
of some clearly marked features both of good and
of evil. There never was, I believe, a time when
on the whole the character of the English Clergy
stood higher for devotion to the proper labours of
their great calling, for purity of life and conversa-
tion, and for a sober earnestness in religion. And
the fruit of this may be traced both in the amount
of work done, and also in the general appreciation
of that work, and for its sake of the labourers them-

d 2

selves, by the great mass of their fellow-country-
men.

This may be seen in the difference between the
common estimate of the Established Church and its
ministry now from what it was but a few years ago.
This difference may be traced in our literature, in
society, and in Parliament.

The change, indeed, in this last upon almost all ques-
tions affecting the Established Church is remarkable
and cheering. Many causes, doubtless, have worked
together for this good result. Amongst them it would,
I think, he unjust not to name those various efforts for
bringing Churchmen into united action, which have
so nobly occupied the thoughts and labours of Henry
Hoare. The Church Institution, linking the Clergy
of every part of the country together and providing
for them trusted representatives in London, through
whom they can exert all the power of common action
at the great centre of our national life, was his first
great achievement for this end. Throughout our own
Diocese the ramifications of this Institution have
already spread, and I trust to see every one of our
Rural Deaneries in active communication with it. Not
less important is that combined action of the body of
Churchwardens, — that true lay representation of our
Church by some of its most important office-bearers
— the organization of which has occupied him last.
It is quite impossible, in my judgment, to over-rate
the importance of awakening within our Established
Church these dormant powers of combined action. It
is like transforming the feeble, scattered, nervous

ganglions of some of the lower forms of animals into
the single brain of a highly organized creature ; for
thus you convert the vast bulk which of old was
weakness because it implied a separation of parts in-
compatible with combined action into an irresistible
strength by giving to it that concentrated and yet
pervasive life which enables it at will to bring all
its powers to bear on any single point.

To what has been already effected through this
living machinery I attribute not a little of that en-
couraging change which has manifestly passed over
the mind of the British Parliament.

But much as I attribute to these loyal and success-
ful efforts, the especial reason why this change seems
to me encouraging is, that I believe it to be the result
of a higher tone having become prevalent amongst
ourselves. On every side there are marks of life and
vigour which cannot be mistaken. At home these
may be traced, not only in churches increased in
number and restored to a decent and comely suit-
ableness for worship, but also in multiplied, better
attended, and more devotional services ; in more
frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, par-
taken of by larger numbers of worshippers, and those,
so far as man can judge, more faithful and more
devout ; in schools in which the number of the pupils
is often more than doubled, and who are taught far
better than they were of old.

Nor, I trust, do we deceive ourselves in attributing
to this increase of warmth and earnestness in the
centre of our spiritual life, a large diffusion of both

directly religious and of moral benefits, the effects
of which may be widely traced in an improved tone
of action and feeling through the bulk of our people.
How encouraging a sight was the long-maintained
patience of our manufacturing population under pri-
vations which would almost instantly have stirred
their fathers to violence; the large and continued
contributions alike from rich and poor to the funds
raised to supply their need ; and the devotion of rare
abilities by some of our greatest statesmen to the
details of every effort made to lighten this distress.

All this is full of encouragement. Doubtless it is
a special blessing of God, when under naturally dis-
turbing influences He makes them that dwell in
a house to be of one mind.

It is not, moreover, at home only that we have such
encouragements. These last years have been signally
marked not only by the increase of Missionary zeal
amongst us, but also by our Missions being planned
more closely on the Apostolic model ; by endeavours
to send forth to every distant land not only the Gospel
of Christ in its simplicity, but also the Church as He
founded it in its completeness. The results of this,
as faith would assuredly expect, have begun already
to gladden our hearts, and she who once wTas called
barren hath borne seven. For all this, and much
more like unto it, let us, my Brethren, thank God,
and take courage.

But there is undoubtedly another and less pleasant
side of this picture, and on it also we ought to fix
our eyes. And here I would not speak of the ordi-

nary resistance to the work of God which must ever
be looked for in this fallen world. That, of course,
like an ever-present atmosphere of evil, exists, and
must exist, around us. As surely as the Spirit strives
against the flesh, so surely must the flesh lust against
the Spirit. To say nothing of that secret strife within
our own hearts of which we are all sadly conscious,
we must each one, in our own parishes and in the
world around us, meet with and struggle manfully
against that unceasing opposition to the Gospel of
our Lord which must be stirred up by the disordered
passions and evil principles of fallen and unconverted
men. But it is not of this that I would speak, but
rather of the peculiar working of evil in the present
day, and of the mode in which we should meet it.

Now this energy of corruption always accompanies,
and is in some measure the inevitable correlative of,
the special good which at that time God has given to
us. The eating rust breaks out upon the most polished
steel. To find, then, our peculiar dangers, we must
examine our special blessings.

Now these, without doubt, are our great liberty of
thought, and word, and action ; the well - ordered
security of person and of property which we enjoy ;
the peculiar abundance of material comforts which is
diffused through all ranks of society, and which has
tended to produce a remarkable character of general
respectability amongst us ; the spread of intellectual
cultivation, if not of a very high order yet of great
superficial extent, together with a rapid and advancing
growth of science, especially in those departments of

its kingdom which tend to subdue the earth to
man’s dominion, and increase the diffusion of gene-
ral comfort.

It is not difficult to see the temptations to evil
which must accompany such blessings. A population
rich in them must be tempted to overvalue wealth, first
as the means of obtaining physical enjoyment, and
then as the countersign of respectability. This in
turn must endanger the severity of virtue ; it must
threaten in more ways than one the sanctities of family
life, — by relaxing the strictness of parental govern-
ment, by discouraging marriage, by making luxuries
grow into essentials, by facilitating every kind of
licence, so that it is practised under the disguising
veil of an outward decency. Farther : this licence
will be tempted by the prevalence of liberty to assert
itself against all command, earthly and heavenly;
whilst the rapid growth of physical enquiry will
specially direct the energies of its rebellious temper,
first against the presence with us of the supernatural,
and then against the distinctiveness and so the real-
ity of Revelation. These, then, must be our special
dangers. How are we making head against them?
This is a most anxious question ; is the answer to it
altogether encouraging ? I fear that some signs of
evil, counterbalancing the good we have rejoiced to
notice, may well make our hearts ache, and redouble
our prayers and our labours.

Certainly there is a terrible tendency amongst us to
worship wealth, and to make life as far as possible
soft and luxurious. Certainly the rule of parental

authority was never less asserted or admitted than at
present. Would to God I could with truth stop here !
But I fear that it is not without too good ground for
their assertions that those best qualified to speak upon
the subject tell us that difficulties connected with
social position are to a quite new degree discouraging
amongst us God’s great ordinance of holy matrimony ;
and that the poisonous presence of secret vice is pro-
portionally spreading in the middle and upper classes
of society. That the evil is not limited to these is at
least implied, if it be true, as I greatly fear that we
must admit it is, that there is an increase in our land
of the unnatural wickedness of infanticide.

Farther : proofs, alas ! abound that to an 'extent
hitherto unknown there is an inclination to doubt,
and even to deny, the presence of any supernatural
power acting really amongst us in the Church of
Christ, in Providence, in Revelation, and in Grace.
Our general literature is in many of its departments
marked by the presence of this temper ; and the press
teems with the writings of men who profess at once
to believe in the Bible and to deny its supernatural
character ; to receive what has been revealed, but to
reject Revelation ; whilst the existence of a puling
superstition — which, rejecting the great doctrine of
the Communion of the Saints, seeks to commerce with
the dead by rappings and mediums — attests, whilst it
avenges, some decay of reasonable faith.

There can, my Reverend Brethren, be no question
amongst us as to the mode in which we ought to deal
with the first class of these dangers. We must meet

them in open conflict with the Word of Truth and the
Armour of Righteousness. We must still remind those
who are seeking greedily after wealth that “ they who
will be rich fall into temptation and a snare we
must charge “ them that are rich in this world, that
they trust not in uncertain riches V’ We must exhort
young men that they be “ sober-minded,” and “ flee
youthful lusts.” We must set before them the blessed-
ness of having the living God for their portion, the
love of Christ as their riches, and the indwelling of
the Spirit as their sanctification ; and we must so live
before them that our lives may witness to them the
greater blessedness of a heavenly conversation.

As to that second class of errors, which assault
the faith more immediately than the practice, and the
reason more directly than morals, it may perhaps, at
first sight, not seem so plain what is the course of
our duty ; yet as to these, too, it must be in fact the
same. We have God’s Revelation as we have His
Law, and we must cleave to it purely, wholly, and
determinately. We must let no indolence of spirit
make us yield up the great contention for the truth
which in all generations God’s witnesses have had to
maintain ; we must let no illusive promises of intel-
lectual advancement beguile us from the simplicity of
the Gospel ; but holding fast the word of truth, and
striving earnestly for the old faith once delivered to
the saints, we must not fear to say with the great
Apostle of the Gentiles, “ If any man preach any other
Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him
b 1 Tim. vi. 17.

be accursed0.” You will, I am certain, feel with me
that this is neither the time nor place for entering at
large on a refutation of these opinions. The objections
advanced by these writers must to a very great degree
be answered in detail ; and he that wrould deal con-
vincingly with them must therefore be prepared to
examine them at a length which would be impossible
here. Such a treatment they have already received
from many able hands, and we need not be in any
measure ashamed of the answers given to objectors
by the existing defenders of our faith. The issue of
this strife is in the hands of God. It may be that the
rapidity of the Church’s growth, the great stirring
within her of the religious affections, the shooting
forth on all sides of the green tendrils of awakened
feelings, and here and there perhaps something of
the rank growth of a too hastily developed ritual,
rendered such a sharp touch of frost needful ; and
that, having nipped what was too forward to be
matured, called up the sterner spirit of argument,
and awoke from their temporary slumber the reason-
able defences of our faith, the storm of infidelity shall
pass away, as it has passed before. It may be so.
But, on the other hand, it may be that we are but
entering on the first approaches of that dreary winter
of unbelief which shall usher in the glorious spring-
tide, when the Son of Man cometh. It may be that
what we hear around us now are the echoes of the
coming footfall of the great Antichrist. God knows.
But however it be, it equally becomes us to hold fast

c Gal. i. 9.

for ourselves the word of truth, and as God’s watch-
men to be marking vigilantly the signs of the times,
that we may be ready to meet each error as it rises
with the sure witness of His unfailing truth. Some
utterance then you may, I think, at such a time ex-
pect from one set over you in the Lord as to the
general aspect of this assault upon our faith, and as
to the mode in which it becomes us to bear ourselves
in relation to it. To these points, then, God helping
me, I will now address myself.

And, first, let me ask you to notice how widely
this spirit is spread. So far from being confined to
our own Church or nation, wherever throughout
Christendom the mind of man is awake, equally
amongst Roman Catholics and Protestants, there it
is stirring d. Next, observe that it does not profess to
be an attack upon the Christian faith, still less a
maintenance of atheism. It professes to be an at-
tempt to develope the true inward life of Chris-
tianity ; to make its doctrines reasonable, its morals
perfect, its pervading spirit large and comprehensive.
It would find in the Christian Creeds, as in all other
modes of belief, a residuum of truth : in the Holy
Scriptures, as in all other good books, a remaining
word of God, after the errors and prodigies had been
discharged from its pages : in the Church, when the
supernatural had been eliminated from its constitu-

d A striking instance of this may he seen in the recent Vie de
Jesus , by Ernest llenan, which differs from the writings of our
own authors only in its more plain profession of the Ebionite
heresy.

tion and its life, a congregation ever advancing to-
wards its complete development and full perfection.

It is quite essential to our comprehension of this
movement, and therefore to our being able effectually
to oppose it, that we should understand that it pro-
fesses to aim not at the destruction of Christianity,
but at its perfecting. Hence it has happened that
a very few of our own body have persuaded them-
selves that they may retain their position amongst
us, and yet lend their aid and countenance to the
spread of the new opinions. Such a fact is an addi-
tional reason for our seeking thoroughly to under-
stand the meaning of this movement, and the limits
to which in consistency it must reach.

Now what has been already said may, I think, suf-
fice to fix its meaning. It is an endeavour to get
rid of all belief in the personal acting amidst us of
any supernatural power, whether in the realms of
matter or of spirit. Every movement in either king-
dom is to be resolved into the working of a fixed
system of unalterable laws pervading all being. But
it is to be observed, that whilst so far there is a
great consent within the school, yet that there is
as great a variance on the further question of how
those laws came to be impressed on the creation.
As to this, indeed, all these writers are confused,
indistinct, and often self-contradictory ; sometimes
inclining to the Pantheistic view ; sometimes, how-
ever unconsciously, to that of a simple atheism.
Thus we are told in one of their latest volumes6,

e A Brief Examination of Prevalent Opinions on the Inspiration
of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. By a Lay

which I shall quote throughout the remarks I
shall here make, with full confidence that it ex-
presses most thoroughly, and in the most careful
language, the last expressions of the advocates of
this new scheme of Christianity, that “to a perfect
intelligence, one particular individual existence being
given, it would necessitate in thought the rest of the
universe of Being ; as a scientific anatomist can re-
construct in idea the whole of an animal organism
from the inspection of a single member. To such an
intelligence each individual existence would imply the
whole of the universe as conditionary and conditioned
by its existence f,” &c.

Now this it could of course do only on the sup-
position that all which exists, exists of necessity in
one continuous chain of correlative being. Once
admit the presence and acting of a reasonable Will
in the midst of such a creation, and this necessary
correlation is at an end. Even man, because he has
a will, perpetually interferes through the acting of its
higher law with the continuance of the lower chain of
prefixed conditions. Every interference of the will of
man with the laws of gravitation is an instance in
point. When he projects upwards into the air the
stone which the force of gravity would force to the
earth, he interferes with the acting of the lower con-
stant law by the simple introduction of the higher.
It is absolutely dependant upon his will whether that

Member of the Church of England. With an Introduction by
Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Essex, &c.
(Longman, Green, and Co. 1861.)

f Introduction to Brief Examination, &c., p. lvii.

stone shall, as all the inevitable sequences require, lie
motionless upon the earth, or whether it shall mount
upwards into the middle air against the primary law
of its nature. The voluntary acting of the will of
a reasonable being interferes, that is, with the chain
of events around him. And if we suppose the en-
trance into such a world of Being of a Divine Person,
acting so as to administer the lower creation for
purposes of love and goodness towards reasonable
creatures, themselves possessed of free will ; and sup-
pose, further, that for any reason He is willing to heal,
to feed, or to teach them ; such interferences as we call
“ miracles,” — that is, no true infraction of any law,
but the subjecting for the time the lower law to the
higher, — become, so to speak, natural. But the pre-
sence of such a Divine Person with us is exactly the
fact which these writers wish to deny ; and so they
are driven to such statements as this, which involves
in its very terms the whole doctrine of atheistic neces-
sity. Probably its utterer was himself unconscious
that he was teaching atheism; his only aim being
to exclude alike from nature and from grace the
voluntary actings of a personal God ; hut not the
less surely though it may be unconsciously do he
and those who think with him in their strife with
what has hitherto been received as Christianity attack
theism itself ; for whilst they seem to themselves still
to maintain it, they do in fact deny one or other of
its necessary consequences.

Perhaps it is the attempt to veil this from them-
selves which leads them more commonly to attack

the acting of God amongst us, by adopting the Pan-
theistic method of confounding the Creator with His
works. Thus the same writer says again : “ This
universe is interpenetrated and combined into an
infinite whole by an all -pervading infinite Spirit ....
He is not withdrawn from the universe, or from any

of its parts, as governing it from without it is

the natural and necessary expression of His thought
according to a divine nature and a rational neces-
sity g.” And again, he tells us that God “is in the
most intimate relation with the whole universe of
finite existences, which is, as we have said, the ex-
perience of His own life and reason

The end to be gained by this Pantheistic confusion
of the Creator with His works is what we saw before
to be this writer’s object. He would exclude from the
administration of the worlds of nature and of grace
the direct acting of a personal God ; and so he
tells us that “ the distinction between natural and
supernatural is fluctuating and arbitrary . . . that
which is as yet unknown is supernatural Here we
should note a well-concealed, but very mischievous
fallacy. It is of course quite true that to ignorance
many things appear to be infractions of the ordinary
laws of nature, which knowledge ascertains to be their
simple fulfilment. An eclipse in the heavens over us,
or the volcanic eruptions of the earth below us, are
instances in point. In this sense, therefore, it is
most true that the line between the natural and
the supernatural is fluctuating and arbitrary. But it
g Introduction, p. lix. h Ibid., p. lxii. * Ibid., p. lxiii.

is simply a fallacious assumption to infer that there
is no line between the two, because the mists of mis-
apprehension prevent the ignorant from tracing it with
perfect accuracy ; or that God does not personally inter-
fere in His world when He says that He does, because
untaught men have believed Him so to interfere when
He has not done so. Having, then, thus fallaciously
confounded together, as though they were identical, our
subjective notion of when God may be pleased to in-
terfere, with the objective fact of His interfering at all
with the creatures of His hand, he proceeds to state
that “ We cannot suppose God to construct an uni-
verse in order to shew power by infringing laws which
observed order had led His creatures to believe con-
stant, nor to constitute a moral order causing to grow
up in us sentiments of justice and of love in order
to shock them, in the contents of any Revelation He
should make to us\” By “ infringing constant laws,”
and “ shocking moral order,” the writer means to de-
scribe those introductions of the higher law of the
action of the will of a Divine Person which, as I have
above suggested, are the fittest attributes of that
supernatural presence with us which it is the writer’s
great object to deny. This, I think, we shall clearly
see, if we examine the detailed application of the prin-
ciple he has thus enunciated.

For first, the direct action of God is hereby
excluded from the Holy Scriptures, which become
“ the product of a special, though not supernatural,
working of the Divine Spirit in a race endowed with

k Introduction, p. lxiy.

rare moral strength, centrally placed for influence
upon history,” &c. “ There must,” we are told, 4 4 be

much error mixed up in such a literature ; error
not touching scientific matters only, but also moral
and spiritual subjects1.” “ If there were,” it is sug-
gested, “ no principle or force in operation, — natural
or supernatural, — ensuring absolute truth or accuracy
in the Scriptures as to comparatively unimportant-
particulars, with what reason can it be inferred re-
specting the more weighty ? if the Scriptures be not
found self-consistent in narratives of ordinary occur-
rences, can there be demanded for them an unhesitat-
ing assent when they relate things prodigious m.”

The “marvellous stories11” are, therefore, first to
be “ eliminated :” such, for example, by way of speci-
men, as the waters of the flood covering the moun-
tains ; the waters of the Red Sea standing as a wall
on the right hand and on the left ; Abraham hearing
an audible voice from Heaven ; Joshua arresting the
light ; Isaiah’s reversing the shadow on the dial ;
Jonah being swallowed by the fish, or “the prodigies
related in the first part of the book which goes by the
name of Daniel 0 God’s writing of the Ten Com-
mandments1’. Then we are to understand that “ the
Pentateuch and other narrative books of the Old
Testament” are only “the natural development of
an historical literature^” drawn from “ monuments,”
“lays,” “tales of recitation,” “ annals r,” which have

1 Introduction, p. xxxii. m Ibid., p. xxxiii. n Ibid., p. xxxiv.
0 Ibid., p. xxxix. p Ibid., p. xl. q Ibid., p. xlvii.

r Ibid., p. xlyiii. — li.

been subjected to “ the process according to which
the histories of ancient peoples become invested in
course of time with a supernatural character;” that
in such writings “metaphor abounds from limitation
of thought and paucity of words6;” that “ metaphor
easily runs into simile,” poetical amplification helps,
and then “ metaphors have grown into similes, and
similes have been expanded into allegories, and alle-
gories have come to be taken for histories V* Thus
the “ prodigies” having been eliminated, and pro-
phecy accounted for “ on the supposition of happy
conjecture",” they are now followed by such facts
recorded in Scripture as “ the interviews of Moses
with Jehovah, and Elijah’s commission given him in
Horebx.” Next follows the moral purification, by
a judicious “ discrimination y” of this well-meant but
most erroneous book. Thus we learn that in it “ some
narratives are instinct with strong national prejudices:
such as those of the Exodus, or of the occupation of
Canaan.” For that as to these, “there was no doubt
an Egyptian, a Canaanitish, an Assyrian point of
view, from which public transactions appeared very
differently than they did from the Jewish one. The
Jewish actors in the history may have imagined they
had express Divine command to expel the nations of
Canaan, and Jewish historians would naturally so re-
present itz,” though really they were only actuated
“ by the play of their own passions.” Thus we get
rid of the moral evil supposed to be involved in the

6 Introduction, p. lii. * Ibid., p. liv. u Ibid., p. xxxv.

x Ibid., p. liv. y Ibid., p. xiv. z Ibid., p. xlii.

E 2

cruelty of killing the Amalekites, of Jehu putting to
death the worshippers of Baal, of Elisha’s guilt in
“ stirring up the rebellion of Jehu.” The amount of
immorality which our new divines find it needful to
remove from the Bible is indeed great : for they have
discovered “ how very like .... are some Biblical
passages to parts of the Homeric poems which Plato
thought a to convey profane and unworthy notions of
the gods\” These immoralities, then, which Plato
has censured, must be removed from the Bible at
all costs, as being “unworthy of Jehovah.” And so
stronger passages only call forth a stronger treat-
ment ; and as it is expressly written that Elijah
called fire from heaven to destroy the companies of
fifty, and as he could have done this “ only in a
faithless and resentful spirit,” the “ quickened moral
judgment” detects the “impossibility” of the ac-
count, and finds that “tradition” in inventing it
“ has done dishonour both to God Himself, and pos-
sibly to His servants0.” So that it is not altogether
certain that the falsehood was Elijah’s invention.

But there remains behind a yet greater instance of
the power of overcoming such a difficulty. For some
of these eliminated prodigies and rejected immoralities
are “ alluded to in the New Testament,” and even by

a It is not easy to read such words from the pen of a Clergyman
of the Church of England without astonishment. Could he have
read Plato’s “ Dialogues,” and compared them with the first
Chapter of the Epistle to the Homans, when he thus proposed to
introduce Plato as a sort of moral verifying faculty for Holy
Scripture ?

b Introduction, p. xv. c Ibid., p. xlv.

our Lord Himself, as “ historical transactions or actual
facts.” To most men this would have presented an
insurmountable barrier in the way of the modern
theory, except on the simple hypothesis of absolute
infidelity. But it is none to our modern critics. For
we are told, “ The New Testament writers could only
express themselves according to the modes of inter-
pretation which were current in their own dayd;”
that is, our Blessed Lord and His Apostles declared
false and immoral traditions to be actual facts because
they could only express themselves according to the
current modes of interpretation. Does the enlightened
critic forget how large a part of our Lord’s discourses
is taken up in ruthlessly exposing exactly such tra-
ditional falsehoods as it is here supposed fettered
Himself and His Apostles ? Surely they who heard His
condemnation of “ making the word of God of none
effect through your tradition6,” would have learned
with some surprise that He could only express Himself
according to the modes of interpretation current in
His day. But strange as this is, it is surely surpassed
by the attempt to take from the miracles of Holy
Scripture the support given to them in the fact of
the Resurrection of our Lord, which, if it happened,
must be the chiefest of miracles, by the suggestion
that, instead of its being “an exceptional miraculous
fact,” it was “the revelation of an universal lawf;”
words which, if they mean anything, must to ordinary
readers mean, that instead of our Lord being the first-

d Introduction, p. liv. e St. Mark vii. 13.

f Introduction, p. xxxyi.

fruits of them that slept, and raising them by the
same Divine power by which He rose Himself, He
did but reveal the unknown fact that by a universal
law ail dead men had been in the habit of rising
again on the third day. Into these sad absurdities
these writers are driven by the one desire of excluding
the direct interference of God from the inspiration of
the Holy Scriptures, and resolving them into “ a lite-
rature the product of a special, though not super-
natural working of the Divine Spirit.”

Holy Scripture, then, being thus dealt with, the
same principle is next applied to that kingdom of
grace the very essential characteristic of which is that
in it God the Holy Ghost does by His inscrutable
working bring to bear upon the family of redeemed
man, and upon individual souls within it, the personal
presence and acting of God. Now this is the point
which is denied by these writers. Accordingly, as
Holy Scripture wms degraded into the literature of
a selected people, with special but not supernatural
assistances, so the Church is in their view a living
congregation of men in whom knowledge, morals, and
imagination are higher than in others ; but there is
no supernatural working amongst them.

All those organs, therefore, through which the
Blessed Spirit works are to be disparaged to the ut-
most. To believe that God the Holy Ghost actually
works on the faithful soul through Sacraments is to
trust “ to magical formularies.” It is “a superstitious
theory” to teach that “ the clergy can convey to
the soul, by a material intervention, some spiritual

influence in an occult manner e that is, that
Baptism or the Supper of the Lord are means of
grace. To believe that Christ has Himself appointed
a ministry, the official acts of which when done
according to His will are His acts, is accordingly
a special stumbling-block. Nothing, we are told, but
an “ imagination misled by the fervour of ecclesiasti-
cal feeling could lead the clergy to fancy themselves
really the recipients in their ordination of a mysterious
power transmitted to them from the Apostles And
it is “ with difficulty to be conceived how within a
recent period extreme views could have become cur-
rent, attributing a supernatural influence to the minis-
trations of an episcopally ordained clergy Indeed,
it would seem that we should have been better off
without such a ministry at all. For it is, we are told,
“ not without fair reason considered” that it is “ an
unhappy thing on the whole for the English Church
to have preserved its chain of episcopal consecrations
unbroken j ;” because, as we gather, if it wanted this,
instead of trusting to its membership in the Church
Catholic, and receiving its Bible, its Creeds, and be-
lieving in the teaching of the Spirit ; instead, that is,
of believing in the Holy Ghost, and therefore in the
Holy Catholic Church, it “ would have had no option
but to throw itself unreservedly upon the principles
of national independence of rational interpretation of
the Biblical Scriptures,” (we have seen, my Brethren,
what that would be,) “ and of the living and therefore

g Introduction, p. xxvi, h Ibid., p. xxviii. 1 Ibid., p. xii.
j Ibid., p. xxvii.

growing convictions of the congregation1*.” What
they would ere this have been let Geneva testify. But
indeed we need not travel to Geneva for a witness, for
the well-grown convictions of these writers, who would
have led such a congregation, may teach us the lesson.
Thus in full consistency with denying supernatural
agency in the world, in the Scripture, and in the
Church, we learn, further, that the “ current doctrines
as to the relation” of fallen children to God is the
root of most immoral teaching, and that it is therefore
a culpable ignorance in Laymen not to “inquire into
the real significance of the narrative of the creation
and fall of man in the first chapters of Genesis, and
into the value of the references to it in the Epistles
and in the Church Catechism 1 because it seems the
acceptance of this fabulous story in the Epistles and
Catechism, together with the teaching of miracles,
leads to the general belief in that most immoral con-
clusion that our natures are corrupt, and that we
each one need the converting influences on his own
soul of God the Holy Ghost. For we are told, “ As
God is believed to have acted in history, so will it be
expected He will act in the individual. If He mani-
fests Himself by interference in nature, and by signs
and wonders in history, He will doubtless operate by
supernatural conversion of the corrupt heart in His
dominion of grace"1.”

Here then, my Reverend Brethren, we have, I be-
lieve with some completeness, the scheme of this new
Christianity before us. It professes to receive the

k Introduction, p. xxviii. 1 Ibid., p. xiii. m Ibid., p. xvi.

Christian Revelation, and the Christian Church, with
its Creeds, its Scriptures, and its hopes ; only it would
remove from them everything supernatural. It would
remove from them and from us all idea of a personal
God administering by a personal presence and direct
interference His world of nature or of grace. The
Godhead is reduced to the mighty self-originating
cause of all being, which He pervades and in some
unknown sense is ; hut which proceeds along its pre-
determined course self-governed and self-administered,
according to eternal and unchanging laws and gra-
dually ascertainable sequences, whilst all the pretended
revelations of His interference are either fables, alle-
gories, metaphors, or mere human inventions, which
were permitted to exist for the education of man until
the living and growing convictions of the congregation
were sufficiently developed to cast them aside, and rest
on the great abstract philosophy into which a subli-
mated Christianity would thus expand and evaporate.

To you, I know, I need not say that this humanizing
of Revelation, this robbing theology of its God, how-
ever little, as we trust, many of its votaries understand
their own theory, is in fact, so far as man’s heart and
soul are concerned, only a disguised atheism. If
there be no supernatural Revelation of Himself by the
unsearchable Jehovah, there can be no certain know-
ledge of Him as a personal God ; and if no such
knowledge of God, there can be no leaning of the soul
upon Him. On such a theory, then, we lose not only
Christian hope, but even Jewish belief and Patriarchal
aspirations.

How, then, are we to meet such a system ? First,
we should be careful not to impute to it any evil
which does not belong to it. Every false imputation
is really an argument in favour of the system to
which it is imputed.

If, then, we charge these teachers with intending
to overthrow the Christian Revelation, as they have
no such intention and know that they have not, we
weaken our own hands and strengthen theirs.

Next, we must have clearly before us the master
principle of their delusion, that we may contend
against that equally everywhere.

Now that master principle is, as we have seen, the
denial of the presence with us of the supernatural,
and so the withdrawal from us of the presence and of
the acting of a personal God : against this, therefore,
we must strive equally everywhere ; in nature and in
grace ; and in grace equally in every part of its blessed
kingdom. For if we yield one part of the truth here,
it will be in vain for us to seek to maintain the rest.
Thus, for example, we shall in the long-run be unable
really to maintain the Divine authority of Holy Scrip-
ture if we give up the Divine authority, in its proper
place, of “ the Holy Catholic Church/' The two are
absolute correlatives. In our sense of the words we
could have no “ Bible” if we had no Church ; if, that
is to say, the Primitive and as yet undivided Church
had not, under the breath of the Divine Spirit, settled
for us its canonn; and if the Church Universal had

n Any one who desires to follow out this subject should refer to
the work of Bishop Cosin, “ Scholastical History of the Canon of

not maintained it. For the Church, as our Article
teaches us, is the witness and the keeper of Holy
Scripture. It is its witness, because it witnesses to
us that this particular Book is God’s revealed will ;
and it is its keeper, because it preserves that Book
whole and unaltered, without addition and without
mutilation, as the inspired record. Without such
a witness there could have been no “ Bible/’ no Book
which we could receive as a whole as the record of
God’s Revelation. For if its claim rested only on its
internal evidence, every individual might strike out
from its pages what did not recommend itself to
him : we might lose the Epistle of St. James because
one objector rejected it, the Epistle of St. Peter to
please a second, and those of St. Paul at the dictation
of a third.

Although when the Bible is once given the Church
must receive its teaching implicitly as the Word of
God, yet in priority of time the Church was of neces-
sity before the Bible. For it is the record of God’s
dealings with and revelations to the Church, and the
thing recorded must in time precede its record. That
it did so in fact we know. The Church of the Old
Testament was founded on that day when God made
a covenant with Abraham ; but four hundred and
thirty years passed away, patriarch after patriarch
lived and died in the faith, before Moses set his hand
to those inspired books, the earliest in Scripture,

the Scriptures.” Of course the Anglican Church, though a true
branch of the Church Catholic, yet as only a branch, could not
settle such a matter as the canon of Holy Scripture.

which bear his name. It was not otherwise with
the Church of the New Covenant. That was horn
on the day of Pentecost ; but it was many years
before the earliest Gospel, that probably of St. Mat-
thew, was given to the Church. Moreover (as we
have seen) to have that fixed canon of Holy Scrip-
ture which defines what is “the Bible,” the Church
must receive it ; and upon this authority of its re-
ception it must propound the Bible to each sepa-
rate soul as the Word of God. For the external
evidence which proves the Bible to be the Word of
God must from the nature of the case precede the
internal evidence. Once received on external evidence
as the revealed will of God, soul after soul will have,
in passage after passage, the inward witness that
through it God Himself is speaking to its inward ear.
The delicate needle of its own spiritual being will
tremble under the awful Presence ; and to the faithful
soul this, the last in point of time, will be for itself
the crowning evidence that through it God is indeed
revealing Himself to His creature. But the Book, as
a Book, must come to him from the witness of the
Church before it is capable of receiving from his own
spiritual experience these inward confirmations. The
will of any testator must be propounded and received
as his by external proof before any benefit can be
claimed under its separate bequests. And how could
the Church fulfil this office unless of a truth God
were personally with her ? Unless her whole system
be supernatural, unless a Divine breath inspire her
judgment, how could she discern the truth amidst

the conflicting claims of many writings to be in-
cluded in the sacred record, or settle the canon of
the inspired books — how could she witness to or
keep them? How, indeed, can she without this
fulfil any part of her charge for God’s glory or
man’s salvation? Unless God be with her, — not as
a causative power acting now only through the self-
administering laws of a Divine order, but as a present,
interfering Person, how can her intercession be real
or her prayers anything but a disguised and deceiving
self-magnetism ? For if all things that are, exist in
an unbroken set of inevitable sequences, what room
can there be for prayer or receiving answers to prayer ?
or under such a scheme how can there be any one
to wliom to pray ; for how can prayer be addressed
to a Divine Order? How, again, unless the Divine
Spirit, as a real present Person, acts indeed upon
separate hearts, regenerating, converting, renewing,
purifying, strengthening, and saving them, can any
of the means of grace within her be anything else
than what these writers so profanely pronounce them
to be, lying magical delusions ?

There can, in the strife which is forced upon us,
be no intermediate position between the dull natu-
ralism to which so many are tending and a simple
faith in God’s presence with His Church, and so a
hearty belief alike in her Sacraments, her Creeds, her
Orders, and her Bible as the separate portions of
the great system of instruments through which her
God, her Saviour, and her Sanctifier are present
with and working in her. And such a faith will

breed a wholesome reverence for all which God has
given us, which is the safeguard our own spirits
need amidst the manifold perturbations around us.
We shall feel, when alterations are proposed to us in
our offices of prayer or in our Creeds, even before we
see the direct evils they wTould work, what the wise
surgeon feels as to the subject of his skill, that he
is dealing not with a mere mass of matter, but with
the delicate organization of a living being to whose
very existence one careless touch of the knife may-
be fatal. We dare not handle rashly any organism
through which we do indeed believe that God the
Holy Ghost, who has framed it for His indwelling,
is yet stooping to work. This, then, secondly: we
must throughout the strife maintain the supernatural
against the naturalist theory. Thirdly, and as a sub-
division of what has last been said, we must maintain
fearlessly the same truth in dealing with the seeming
discrepancies which anxious or sceptical minds are
seeking to exasperate into contradictions between the
voice of God in Nature and His voice in Revelation.

This I believe to be of such importance that I will
add a few words specially upon it.

It is alleged, then, that recent discoveries in science
contradict direct assertions of the Bible.

Now how should we treat such allegations, or deal
with the apparent facts on which they rest? First,
we should never refuse, or hesitate, or dislike, or fear
to receive any really authenticated fact because it
seems to contradict any other fact, either in Nature or
in Revelation. Secondly, we should never twist, dis-

tort, or mutilate any such fact in order to make it
fit into any system. All such conduct is more or less
either fraud or weakness ; as it is most certainly unbe-
lief. Nature is as much the voice of God as is Reve-
lation. We may through our own infirmities or ig-
norance misunderstand or mistake that voice, either
in Nature or in Revelation ; but the voice itself must
be true ; and our faith is to be shewn by our simple
acceptance of it, without any regard to consequences.
When two such voices, then, seem to contradict each
other, faith is not startled and uneasy ; she does not
look eagerly about for some reconciliation of them, or
snatch at seeming explanations, as though eager to
save an endangered character ; still less does she seek
to suppress any fact because she does not at once
see how it will fit in with her own system. But she is
calm, self-sustained, and satisfied that there is perfect
agreement between these two voices, and that the
seeming disagreement is altogether the fruit of the
present ignorance of man. The confiding child who
has no doubts of his earthly father’s truth and know-
ledge has no feeling of misgiving when he is told by
him that the fire with its heat and the ice with its
intense cold will alike burn his flesh : he does not
know the philosophic * reason which makes each alto-
gether true ; but he believes and is satisfied, because
he knows that his father’s word is true. And the be-
liever in like manner, if his faith is firm, knows that
what God says both in nature and in grace is true,
even when he cannot yet reconcile what seem to be
discordant utterances. And here, too, faith is the

best philosophy. For it is altogether as unphiloso-
phical for him who knows but one part of a mighty
whole made up of many dependant portions to sit
with his partial knowledge in judgment on what is
propounded to him concerning it by one who knows
the whole, as it is unfaithful to question what is
received from another on the faith of that other’s
word.

Thus, then, these difficulties are to be met. Nor
need we fear to avow that — so far as we can learn the
plan of the Almighty with us from the analogy of His
other dealings — we should even expect their presence,
both as a discipline for our will, and a trial of our faith.
And this we may certainly add, that whilst we receive
with a like docility both voices, on different evidences,
— not daring to doubt the witness of the senses our
Maker has given to us, nor to distrust the Word
which on the evidence of His Church He has spoken
to us, — and know that, like bodies moving in va-
rious planes, they may cross each other’s path with-
out collision ; yet that on the whole, every wide in-
crease of our knowledge has tended to shew that many
things which once seemed to be were not really con-
tradictory, and that those which still have not reached
are yet approaching to a full reconciliation.

But besides the first question, how should we bear
ourselves in conflict with these errors? another and
a grave enquiry will present itself to many of you.
How, you may ask, is the Church, if she is faithful,
to deal with the teachers of them ? Are they to be
left simply to the refutations of argument ?

I should reply to this question by first marking
a most important distinction between those who are
and those who are not ordained ministers of her
communion. Generally, and except in the extreme
case of malignant blasphemy, I believe that it is
better to meet by argument alone the erroneous views
which from time to time may be propounded by those
who, believing themselves to be and wishing to continue
lay members of her communion, do still accept her
Creeds as the revelation of the truth of God. She
has so strong a vantage-ground in her transmitted
possession of the educated mind of this people, and
into its texture she has, through her long-continued
fidelity to primitive doctrine, so thoroughly wrought
the marked features of the Gospel message, that
she need not fear betraying her great trust of main-
taining the truth of God as it has been committed to
her keeping, even though she exercise herein a large
forbearance. The habits, too, of the English mind
seem to prescribe this as the course by which the
truth can best be preserved. The gravity of our
national temper imparts, amongst us, a steadiness to
established convictions which, gives argument in de-
fence of what is, a great because a just advantage.
Fickle, impulsive minds favour every assault on what
has been received as true ; deeper spirits are moved
reluctantly from the resting-places where their souls
have found peace. Amongst us, therefore, the voice
of reasonable argument will be heard. And our great
and blessed inheritance of liberty in thought, speech,
and action makes us keenly sensitive as to what even

seems to be the intolerable evil of bringing in autho-
rity to compel thought. In the interests, therefore,
of truth we should in all such contests with false
teaching trust much to argument, little to authority,
and less to censure.

But it is altogether a different matter how the
Clergy of our Church, who teach doctrines strange
to her, ought to be dealt with. For this is not a
question of maintaining truth, but of keeping en-
gagements ; of honesty, not of orthodoxy. For here
we are not seeking to suppress error as error, but to
prevent the dishonesty of a man engaging to teach
one thing, and then under that pretext teaching its
opposite. For every ordained Clergyman of our
Church is invested, by a body which holds a fixed
and definite faith, with the office of teaching that
faith. Our own, like every other branch of the
Church, requires first a solemn declaration that he
himself believes that, to teach which he is made a
teacher ; and this primary engagement must last on
so long as he exercises the office received upon its
trust. If, therefore, he ceases so to believe, he is
hound in common honesty to resign the office ; and if
the dulness of his spirit does not apprehend this neces-
sity, she is bound to remove him from it. This obliga-
tion she contracts when she clothes him with the office
of a teacher. She cannot abdicate her own respon-
sibility, and so long as he holds her credentials she
is responsible for what he teaches. The pretended
liberality of leaving him to be dealt with by the good
sense and right feeling of the community is simply

making herself partaker of his sin. If through human
infirmity the College of Surgeons granted a diploma
to a common poisoner, would it allow him to continue
his evil practice clothed with the authority of its high
sanction when his true character had been discovered ?
The College must leave to the Criminal Courts the
punishment of his crime, but it must at once it-
self strip him of the professional certificate which it
granted, lest he prolong his misdoing under its shelter.
And the Church may leave to argument the refuta-
tion of his errors, and to the right feeling of Society
the dealing with such dishonest evasions as the here-
tical teacher who holds her Orders must surely prac-
tise, but she must strip him of his teacher’s office,
or share his sin. But against the performance of this
plain duty is urged the plea, ‘ Then, you do not allow
the Clergy to think.’ This surely is one of the most
frivolous and false of objections. For so dealing with
them, the Church not only allows, but actually requires
them to think. The primary requirement of subscrip-
tion as we still maintain it is as to wbat the subscriber
himself believes, and therefore will teach. The Church,
so far as her tests can reach, requires not merely ortho-
dox teaching, but such teaching from one who himself
believes that which he teaches to others. She would
therefore have her Clergy think, enquire, reason, and
satisfy themselves fully and entirely as to what they
teach. She abhors a mechanical, lifeless declaration
from parrot lips of unfelt truth. “ We believe, and
therefore speak ° “ We testify that we have seenp.”

0 2 Cor. iv. 13. P John iii. 11.

F 2

These are her very watchwords ; and instead of con-
tradicting, she only re-affirms this when she says
that if the result of thought be that the teacher
must in honesty teach what is strange to her, he
must in like honesty lay down or be deprived of the
office of teaching wTith her commission. For it is
of the essence of the Church to have a fixed faith,
distinct Creeds, unfaltering teaching. And as this is
of her essence, she cannot, without abdicating her
highest functions, stand negligently by whilst one
who teaches in her name teaches contrary to that
truth which she delivers. The imperial mint cannot
wink at the circulation of forged coin, and trust for
its refusal to the good sense of the community.

Transfer this question to any other subject-matter,
and all men would perceive how simple is the an-
swer. A father believing firmly in one scheme of the
science of medicine, engages one of its professors to
teach that scheme to his sons preparing for their
professional career. Whilst going through his course
the teacher’s views alter, — enlarge if you will, — and
he perceives the falsehood of what he meant to teach,
and the truth of what he is pledged to oppose. Can
he as an honest man instruct his pupils any longer
either in what he has ceased to hold as true, or in
that which contradicts what he has engaged to teach ?
The verdict of all honest men would be unfaltering
and unanimous, — he may think as he will, but he
must teach both what he thinks and what he is
pledged to teach, and if this cannot any longer be,
he must lay down the teacher’s office. This is the
justification of the great principle of our own terms

of subscription. If subscription is to mean anything
amongst honest men, it must address itself to what
the teacher believes as well as to what he will teach.
If our own terms of subscription can be shewn to
go beyond this, and they can be lowered so as not to
fall below this, I should raise no objection to such an
alteration. If they are needlessly frequent or various,
I should not hesitate as to their correction. In itself,
of course, all enforced subscription is an evil, though
in the present condition of the Church I believe a
necessary evil. But if it is to be retained at all, it
must comprehend this primary condition of its being
a declaration of the subscriber’s own belief. Whatever
applause for liberality may be won by the sacrifice,
never could I be persuaded to abate this condition, and
thereby dangerously encourage morbid minds in their
sickly fancies, or yet more fatally give facilities for
subtle minds to tamper with the simplicity of truth.
As honest men, we cannot in my judgment require
less from our religious teachers than the assurance
not only that they will use certain formularies and
teach certain doctrines, but that they do themselves
unfeignedly assent to all and everything which they
are to address to God in prayer or to declare as His
truth to the congregation.

Here I cannot pass entirely by one great fallacy
which seems to me to mislead some as to this most
important question. We are urged to widen our
terms of subscription that we may bring larger num-
bers of our mixed population into the established
Church. There are, so far as I can see, but two ways

in which an alteration of our terms of subscription
could tend to produce this result. If it is to widen
the gate of entrance, it must do so, either by altering
our standard of doctrine, or by employing words
which can be pronounced with equal fitness by those
who do and by those who do not hold the same truth.
Is it, then, lawful for us by either of these means to
seek for greater uniformity ?

Now, in the true sense of such words, I yield to no
one in intensity of my desire thus to gather in to our
Church our brethren of the separation. I would not
willingly say one word which could widen the breach
between us : I acknowledge with thankfulness the
many instances in which they have supplied, in large
measure, the Church’s indolence or lack of teaching :
as individuals I honour and esteem many of them.
My whole soul yearns for greater unity amongst
those who bear the blessed Name, and love the Lord
Jesus Christ in sincerity. I believe that the separa-
tions of Christendom, and our own religious divisions,
are amongst the very heaviest judgments upon past
sin which we are called on to endure ; that they are
our shame, our weakness, and our punishment. No
sacrifice could be too costly which would give us back
the unbroken unity of the early Church. But that
unity, be it ever remembered, was an agreement in
the truth. As Christian men, we cannot buy concord
at the price of truth. If we could bring every man
of this people into our visible communion by the
sacrifice of one word of Christ’s truth, it were death
to do it. We are incorporated to hand on the truth.

It is His, not ours. We cannot alter it, dilute it, or
disguise it. We are sworn, each one of us, to contend
earnestly for it ; and how can we do this if we either
yield any of it up, or consent to seek through the
equivocating use of ambiguous confessions to conceal
real differences under a pretended agreement ? Such
a course would benefit none. The loss to the Church
of any truth is a loss which defies calculation. It
lowers the tone of her whole life ; like the palsy
stroke, with its deathlike enfeeblement, it reaches
everywhere. Better far is it for ourselves to be
fewer in numbers and to hold all the truth, than
to purchase all numbers and lose one article of the
Christian Faith.

Better is it, too, for those without. First, because
such a course, by maintaining objective truth in its
own sharp distinctness of outline, even though it be
in a body with which they are not in visible commu-
nion, does materially tend to keep alive the faith for
them, and prevent their losing any of the common
deposit which survives with them in their separation ;
and next, because thus only can we keep alive true
honesty as to holding any truth : and dishonesty is
far worse than error ; for error may be venial, but
dishonesty is always damnable. Better even were it,
sad as it is, that until the bright light of the Lord’s
presence is poured upon us both we stand perpetually
apart, each striving earnestly for what we believe to be
the truth, than that we sink together into the stagna-
tion and death of a dishonest compromise. Better
that, watching earnestly to keep bitterness and strife

out of our hearts, we still struggle for the truth apart,
than that we agree in common confessions, each con-
scious of their own and of the other’s dishonesty, and
not daring to look boldly into each other’s faces as we
promulge the common equivocation.

But one question still remains. How, in an en-
dowed national Establishment like ours, in which
spiritual sentences involve civil rights, and must
therefore, by reason of their temporal accidents, be
liable, on appeal, to revision and to virtual reversal
by the temporal courts, — how can the Ghurch perform
what we have seen to be her bounden duty of taking
from the false teacher his abused commission ?

Now here let me say first, in matters of such in-
tricacy as this question involves it is specially im-
portant not to exaggerate our actual difficulties. Let
us then at once admit that we need not, and ought
not to anticipate diverse sentences in the Courts
Christian and Temporal in any cause where it can be
proved that the offender has distinctly contradicted
any of the doctrinal formularies of the Church. A
recent case, in which the firmness of the Bishop
of Winchester freed the Church, after every appeal
had been tried, from such a false teacher, proves
that in such instances we may count upon the right
being done.

But there are other and more difficult cases to
be provided for, in which the novelty of the error,
or of the special mode of reproducing it, renders
it impossible to make it clear to the judgment
of the Court that there exists a contradiction be-

tween it and formularies which were framed under
other circumstances for the prevention of other false
doctrines. How, then, are these cases to be met ?
Plainly, not by straining the law, and so doing evil
that good may come. There is, I believe, but one
remedy for these extreme cases, and that is, that the
Church should meet fresh forms of error by fresh
definitions of the truth. There is nothing new in this
plan. We acted directly on it when we framed our
Articles, we adopt that act whenever we enforce them.
That the remedy is difficult of application is in my
eyes one of its great recommendations, for it ought
to be resorted to only on a great necessity ; that it
can be applied is clear, for all the machinery required
for applying it is now in actual operation ; that its
employment may become inevitable, too many evil
symptoms give us already timely warning.

Meanwhile for our present safety, and for our
future deliverance from evils which may arise, it
seems to me most important that the highest Court
of appeal in matters ecclesiastical should be set free
from that delusive appearance of having power to
define the Church’s doctrines with which it is in-
vested by the presence amongst its judges of three of
our episcopal order.

Near akin to this subject is one which closely con-
cerns you, my Reverend Brethren of the Parochial
Clergy, and to which recent circumstances have
given a special prominence ; I mean the fitness for
its purpose of our prescribed Order for the Burial of
the Dead.

Now here, as upon all such subjects, we must begin
by clearing the true question with which we are con-
cerned from the ambiguities with which it is beset.
The practical question, then, for us, is not whether our
Office is in itself absolutely perfect, but whether any al-
teration in its wording would remove certain objections
which are taken to its general use. Beautiful and touch-
ing as it is, perhaps the most beautiful and most moving
of all our Services, yet even of it, as of any other human
composition, we may well hesitate to predicate abso-
lute perfection. Some of us may perhaps even think
that we can trace a slight exaggeration in some of its
expressions, into which its framers were led by a whole-
some fear of the Romish fable of Purgatory. Such
comparatively trifling blemishes we might gladly see
removed in other times, but not in the face of a body
of eager revisionists, who, desiring great doctrinal
changes, would accept any change, such as we could
make, only as an instalment and as an argument for
greater alterations. If indeed our Office contained any-
thing untrue we should be bound ; or if we could
safely remove grave objections it might be wise; to run
the risk. But neither of these suppositions is the
fact. There is nothing in it, we believe, repugnant to
the Word of God. Could the objection to its general
use be removed by such an alteration of the service ?
Without hesitation I answer, No. For the difficulty
is not one which depends upon the use of a little more
or a little less in the words of Christian hope which
are employed, but upon the tone of the Service alto-
gether. For the survivors indeed, who are the real

objects of our care, a Service might be made abso-
lutely dangerous if it were worded with such skill in
ambiguities of expression that without directly shock-
ing his moral sense it suggested to the hearer the
deceitful hope that men might live in sin and yet die
in peace. The high tone of our Service is itself the
safeguard against such an evil. Its voice sounds as an
awful witness against those who have lived and died
at variance with their Christian profession. No : if
an Office is to be constructed which can be indis-
criminately used with truth of application and safety
to the survivors over those who have and those who
have not the blessed assurance of Christ’s Gospel,
every word of Christian hope must be excluded from
it. Any change in our Office short of this will be
a mockery, so far as concerns the real objection to it ;
and as no man advocates this change, I conclude that
no change can remove the real difficulty.

What, then, is the alternative ? Are the fifteen or
twenty thousand parochial clergy of our land to have
imposed on each one of them the terrible duty of fore-
stalling the office of the unerring Judge and deciding
for each departed parishioner exactly what amount of
hope may be entertained of his salvation by using, vary-
ing, or refusing in each case the Burial Service ? You,
my Reverend Brethren, who know what this would en-
tail upon yourselves, and what it would breed amongst
your people, (too ready, often, as they are even now
to seek and to form unwarranted judgments on the
dead,) would be the first to protest against such legis-
lation. This, then, cannot be the remedy we seek.

To find that, we must look in the face and dare to
meet the real evil. The rubric which precedes the
“ Order” may guide us to it. 4 4 Here it is to be noted
that the Office ensuing is not to be used for any that
die unbaptized, or excommunicate, or have laid vio-
lent hands on themselves.” Not that as to any one
of these from whom the Church withholds, nor as to
any one for whom she prescribes, the employment of
the Burial Service, she undertakes the monstrous
office of pronouncing on his eternal destinies. So to
understand it, is entirely to misconceive the whole
purpose of the Service. Its use does not pronounce the
salvation, its absence does not pronounce the damna-
tion, of a single soul. It is constructed on a different
principle. It is a service of prayer and praise to God,
full of expressions of that Christian hope as to all
those who have died in the communion of the Church
of Christ which His blessed Gospel warrants our
entertaining. It is framed with a view to the spi-
ritual condition of a class, not with relation to the
spiritual experience of the individual. It declares in
burning words the blessed truth of the resurrection of
the dead as the portion of all who die in the com-
munion of Christ’s Church. To every one of them,
therefore, such a service belongs as of right. We may,
indeed, form a different estimate of its application to
any individual member of the Church, from our know-
ledge of his faithfulness or unfaithfulness ; though as
to any one so dying we may entertain some hope;
for hope is of all measures, reaching from the trembling
margin of despair up to the triumphant margin of

a rejoicing assurance. But the Service does not refer
to any such impression as to the individual, but upon
the covenant relation of the mystical body of Christ
to its risen Head ; and as to that death therefore of
which He is Vanquisher, in the person of any who
are in the visible communion of His Church, we
dare not, for very loyalty to our Lord, abate one
syllable of the tone of hope. The evil is, that
through the disuse of discipline this Service, con-
structed for the dead in Christ, is read over those
who at their death were morally, and ought therefore
to have been actually, excommunicate. This evil, the
presence of which we allow, arises from the neglect
of their duty by those who, by the Church’s rule,
ought to present for excommunication such open and
notorious offenders. This neglect of duty grew up
when excommunication was accompanied by grave
civil penalties, and as those penalties have been re-
moved the neglect ought now to be corrected.

Let, then, the eager advocates for reform as to
this matter understand that if there is to be any
change it must be sought for, not in altering the
Office, but in such a practical restoration of dis-
cipline as shall once more mark distinctly the line
between those who are and those who are not in the
communion of the Church.

This is indeed the only possible practical remedy
for the evil. There can be no nicely graduated mea-
sures of hope, to be expressed according to the judg-
ment of our tens of thousands of parochial clergymen
over the dead who have died in the Lord. And, on

the other hand, there can be no warrant for our using
language grounded only upon God’s covenanted mer-
cies to members of Christ, over those who have died
separate from Him. Not that we thereby doom them
to perdition. As to the whole class of the unbap-
tized, for example, few even of the gloomiest religion-
ists would venture to pronounce such a sentence.
We do but say that a Service framed with peculiarity
of application for the members of Christ cannot apply
to, and ought not therefore to he read over, those who
have no such membership. The attempt to compound
a Service which could suit both, would only be to
try to break down the eternal difference between
the Church and the world : to obscure the hopes of
those who sleep in Jesus, in order to whiten the
sepulchres of those who have died without Him.

Meanwhile, it may be well to suggest as a thought
of comfort to those whose minds our lack of discipline
now disturbs, that even if it existed at the full, it could
properly extend only to those miserable cases of the
excommunicate dying plainly impenitent in some deadly
sin ; (I mention by way of example the sudden death
of the burglar in the commission of his crime ;) or in
a hardened rejection of Christ, and blasphemy against
Him. For any indication of repentance, such as a
desire expressed by the dying man for the ministra-
tions of the Church, would wholly alter the case, and
entitle him to claim again a Christian burial.

Time, my Reverend Brethren, warns me to conclude ;
and yet there is one topic more on which, from its im-
portance, as always, so now as it seems to me, especially

I would wish to address to you a few parting words.
The subject on which I would speak is that great
duty of our high office, the preaching of the Word of
God. This must at all times be a most important
part of our ministry, but it is, if possible, at this time
of even peculiar importance. First, because the un-
settlement of the minds of many as to religious truth
requires that we be most fully furnished with all
which is needful for expounding and justifying to
them the ways and works of God ; and next, because
in an age of such general intellectual activity as the
present much is sure to be required from us, and
if we disappoint these requirements we shall lose our
hold on the attention of our flock, and bring reproach
on the ministry.

For if whilst the leading article of almost every news-
paper is written with care, intellectual exertion, and
so as to rouse the reader’s attention, the utterances of
the pulpit alone are dull, monotonous, and droning,
it will soon be powerless and despised ; and so one
of the very chiefest instruments which God has pro-
vided for the saving of souls will, through our care-
lessness, lose its efficiency.

It is but a few plain suggestions I would offer, es-
pecially to my younger brethren in the ministry, to
help them to succeed in the discharge of this great
duty. And first I would say, settle thoroughly in
your minds the greatness of what you have to do.
Never mount the pulpit without having your whole
spirit awed by this thought. You are to speak for
God to men. Your words, through His grace, are

to bring them to Him. Many of them are altogether
afar from Him ; some are wandering further from
Him ; some are reaching ignorantly after Him ; all
need to be stirred up to seek after Him more
earnestly. You have to bring them back, to lead
them on ; to direct their uncertainty ; to arouse
them in their dull distance from Him. Their
eternal destinies hang in great measure on your
words. For a space they will think your thoughts ;
yield their minds to be swayed, bowed, directed,
elevated by you. What grander, what more awful
vocation can a man have than so to speak to his
fellow-men ? This then, first. And from it follows
all that I desire to say. For if preaching be this
great opportunity of honouring God and blessing man,
certainly we should prepare ourselves thoroughly for
it. What reasonable being would go unprepared to
such a task ? What, then, must be the preparation
for this work ? It must be both habitual and imme-
diate. It must be habitual, that previous study may
make our minds full of their subjects, without which
we soon degenerate into narrow, technical, and frigid
statements of the noblest truths ; and again, that
we may be accurate in our statements of truth. It
is God’s truth which affects souls, and if we state
it inaccurately we make it powerless or poisonous.
What physician of the body would dare to ad-
minister carelessly the most powerful drugs of his
art? It is not possible, I believe, for me to say
too strongly to you, that loose, inaccurate declara-
tions of God’s truth do make preachers of the Word

unawares the slayers of souls. We must, then, be
thorough students to be preachers. We should use all
means to be deeper and more successful students of
the mysteries of God. For this end, besides our pri-
vate studies, we may well have recourse to frequent
meetings with our brethren for the direct examina-
tion of the Word of God. Shall politicians have their
conferences, and men of science their consultations,
and we alone neglect what may, as iron sharpens iron,
give some point to our words, or stir the flagging
zeal of our spirits in the blessed search for truth ?

Further, to this habitual we should add immediate
preparation : chiefly and above all that of prayer, that
we may be taught by the great Teacher ; that our
words may be His words, and that in speaking them
we may be His instruments — calm and yet earnest,
reverend and yet lively, deeply serious and yet homely
and expressive ; that we may be what is above all else
except being true, that we may be holy, loving, and
devout in all our utterances.

But though prayer be the chiefest part of im-
mediate preparation, it is far from being all. We
must, if we are sincere, add to it patient labour,
to secure for our discourses depth, solidity, and
order. It is, I believe, mainly idleness which ruins
sermons, which makes them vague, confused, power-
less, and dull. We need ever to remember the some-
what caustic words, “ The sermon which has cost
little is worth just what it cost.” We must labour
first to comprehend our subject, and next to arrange
clearly what we mean to say about it. Many of

our flock are idle hearers, and if we are idle preach-
ers we play up to their weakness. There is great
force in another old saying, “ The sermon which has
cost the preacher little to compose costs the listener
much to hear.” Commonplaces, generalities, reca-
pitulations fill it full, whilst over all is shed the blind-
ing cloud of a meaningless confusion. We must re-
solve and patiently strive to be easily understood, for
which end we must understand ourselves, and then
leave no confusions to mislead others.

Thus prepared, we must be careful, further, what we
speak. It is to he the Word of God — the word of His
grace. His messages of love, not curious speculations,
not displays of our talent ; but Ilis Word in its piercing,
soul-dividing simplicity. His Word in the complete-
ness of His message to man whom He has redeemed.
Heaven and hell ; death and judgment ; sin and salva-
tion ; the love of God — of the Father, of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost ; the incarnation of the eternal Son,
with all its consequences ; His life for us and in us ;
His death ; His resurrection ; His atonement ; the
remission of sins ; the indwelling of the Holy One ;
the Sacraments of His grace ; the communion of His
faithful ones ; the new life in its beginning, its strug-
gles, its victory, and its glory. Here are our subjects.
Old and yet ever new to him who, loving God and
loving souls, will labour to comprehend, to feel, and
to state them. For to enforce these old and cardinal
verities is our very vocation, “ non debcmus dicere
nova sed nove.”

To secure this, I should as a general rule say, never

preach habitually the sermons of others, whether taken
in mass or in fragments mechanically re-arranged into
a composite whole. This is commonly the resource
of vanity or of idleness, weaknesses which in holy
things deepen into sins and drive away the influences
of the Holy Spirit. Nothing short of incapacity can
excuse this as an habitual practice, and then its use
and its cause should be avowed with a humble shame-
facedness which will preach for the unfurnished man.

Widely different from this adoption of others’ ser-
mons, is the practice of reading some full discourses
on a subject on which you are about to preach, in
order to fill or to arouse your own mind, and then com-
posing for yourself when you have made the thoughts
your own. This is often a most useful course.

Suffer me to recapitulate in the form of a few
direct counsels what on this great subject I have
gathered from experience or the writings of others.

To secure thought and preparation, begin, whenever
it is possible, the next Sunday’s sermon at least on
the preceding Monday. Let prayer for God’s help
be the beginning. Then select carefully your sub-
ject— if possible, from the Gospel, Epistles, Lessons,
or Psalms of the day. Choose it according to your
people’s need, and your power. Let it be as much
as possible resolvable into a single proposition.
Having chosen it, meditate upon it as deeply as
you can. Consider, first, how to state correctly the
theological formula which it involves ; then how
to arrange its parts so as to convince the hearer’s
understanding. Think, next, how you can move

his affections, and so win his will to accept it.
See into what practical conclusions of holy living
you can sum it up. Having thus the whole before
you, you may proceed to its actual composition.
And in doing this, if any thoughts strike you with
peculiar power, secure them at once. Do not wait
till, having written or composed all the rest, you
come in order to them : such burning thoughts burn
out. Fix them whilst you can. I would say, never,
if you can help it, compose except with a fervent
spirit ; whatever is languidly composed is lifelessly
received. Rather stop and try whether reading, me-
ditation, and prayer will not quicken the spirit, than
drive on heavily when the chariot-wheels are taken
off. So the mighty masters of our art have done.
Bossuet never set himself to compose his great ser-
mons without first reading chapters of Isaiah and
portions of Gregory Nazianzen, to kindle his own spirit.
In some such way set yourself to compose, and, until
you have preached for many years I would say, to
write, at least one sermon weekly. Study with especial
care all statements of doctrine ; to be clear, particular,
and accurate. Do not labour too much to give great
ornament or polish to your sermons. They often
lose their strength in such refining processes. Having
written them, if you must deliver them with the manu-
script before you, strive to do it as little as if you
were reading, and as much as if you were speaking
them as possible. Do not be the slave of your manu-
script, but make it your servant. If you see that
a word is not understood, vary it ; that an appeal

is reaching some heart, press it home. If you have
the gift, after having written your sermon carefully,
make short notes of it, and preach from these. This
will help you greatly to shew in your manner that
you feel what you say ; the first and chiefest rule
for making it felt by others.

But after all other words are spoken let me say,
my Reverend Brethren, for this and all other parts of
our work we must live as God’s witnesses, if as His
witnesses we would speak. For above all other things,
we must be real. The affectation of feeling in any
part of our ministry, and especially in the pulpit, is
most chilling and hardening. And we cannot really
feel the Gospel message unless its truth is in our
own hearts. In secret meditation and prayer that
love, which is the life of ministerial power, must ever-
more be nourished, as on the mossy mountain-top
where the seething mists distil their precious burden
are fed the hidden springheads of the perennial stream
which fertilizes the lower vale. In these, my Rev.
Brethren, and in the works of patient love and labour
which spring from them, may our lives be spent, until,
in the time which He knoweth, we too be one by
one gathered into* the Paradise of His perfected.
Whither may God of His mercy, for Christ’s sake,
in His own good time bring every one of us.

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Full text of "A primary charge delivered to the clergy of the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glandelagh, and Kildare : and, with some omissions, to the clergy of the provinces of Dublin and Cashel, at the triennial visitation, September and October, 1865"

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